


Still Waters

by tentacledicks



Series: Into The Storm [1]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: BDSM, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, Edgeplay, Hurt/Comfort, Impact Play, M/M, Rough Sex, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-09 06:05:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12881727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: While investigating a lead on a human trafficking ring, Aiden runs into an old face he hadn't expected to see again. Between a case that has suddenly become more complicated than it needs to be and a relationship that wasn't supposed to happen, he might be in over his head.





	1. ebb_

**August 21, 2016, 14:47**

 

It was raining, but it was one of the brief sunshowers that happened down here. Sizable thunderstorms would roll through just about every night, but the daytime never seemed to get rain for longer than thirty minutes. Frustrating when you wanted to stay dry, but never enough that it felt worth bringing an umbrella. It made the humidity hell though, and Aiden had learned to never trust a thermometer down here. They only told half the story.

He was only a couple streets over from the water, watching a man on his usual lunch date. Franklin Schmidt, owner and operator of a couple businesses throughout the bay area—businesses which had profits a little too high for the amount of customers they’d been getting. Aiden had been looking into them over the last week and watching his movements. After Chicago, he hadn’t thought Blume would be able to sell ctOS to any other cities. He’d been wrong.

They could tout their upgrades and fixed systems all they liked—Blume had enemies, and they were the kind to plaster their access up for everyone to see. Aiden had to admit, the DedSec cells that were cropping up in the wake of Nemec’s arrest were awfully convenient; no more smoke and daggers, no more informants and back alley meetings for updated code. Just an app, an IRC, and a cause, waiting for someone to use it.

He wasn’t sure about the cause, but the IRC and the app were useful enough, especially once he’d made sure that his phone couldn’t be used as a resource. And Tampa had a bright and shiny new ctOS 2.0.12 system, firmware updated and cameras all reinforced for the adverse weather… or some kids who’d otherwise think to pull them down. It meant tracking Schmidt had been a matter of finding the right access point and then waiting, and now things were going to pay off.

Schmidt had a very particular schedule he followed: breakfast at home with his wife, work for seven hours, lunch at two-thirty in the afternoon precisely, work for another four hours, and then home again to a just-cooked meal with his wife, made by a young woman who didn’t exist in Blume’s records and never seemed to leave the house. He never visited the same business two days in a row, and Aiden hadn’t been able to get a look at his schedule, so the lunch date was his best chance at getting access to Schmidt’s phone. And it was a _date_ , with one of three women, all very lovely and all very expensive. Always at the same restaurant, an Italian joint attached to a mall—the less expensive mall, though Aiden wasn’t sure if that was a bug or a feature. Always for exactly forty-five minutes, and Schmidt picked up the tab every time.

It was twenty minutes past the beginning of Schmidt’s lunch, and Aiden decided to make his move.

He leaned against the metal railing around the patio, scrolling through his phone like half the other people around him, a half-smoked cigarette dangling between two fingers. The Chinese restaurant behind him seemed to be a popular lunch spot, and there were clusters of people on their phones everywhere. One man in a baseball cap wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. Schmidt’s date had a phone with less encryption, but nothing good on it—it was a burner, probably issued by whatever escort company she worked with, and not meant to serve as anything other than a contact point. He bugged it anyways, just in case.

Franklin was a paranoid guy. With every reason, if he was the one Aiden had stumbled across a reference to while hacking his way through an online auction. His phone was loaded up with security, tight enough to give even a seasoned hacker pause. But Aiden had been doing this for a while now, and he knew the types of encryption these guys tended to favor. Once you knew the pattern, it was just a matter of brute forcing the bits that you hadn’t memorized yet.

Ten minutes to break into his phone. Fifteen minutes left. Aiden started a download, grabbing everything—he never knew when something that looked innocuous was going to yield a goldmine of information. Schmidt hadn’t noticed anything, was too busy flirting with the escort to care. The rain had stopped three minutes ago, the light drizzle giving up entirely, and now Aiden’s shirt was beginning to dry out, the sun filtering through the muggy air.

Seven minutes left. The download was at eighty-three percent. He kept his breathing slow and even, scanning the parking lot and restaurant at regular intervals, unwilling to be caught off guard. No room for errors here. Ninety-two percent.

A flash of white caught his eye, some asshole in a suit in ninety-degree weather. An asshole he recognized after a moment, eyes widening. What the hell was _Jordi_ doing down here?

For a moment, everything was almost too still, Jordi’s suit blindingly bright in the sunlight as he turned a corner on the sidewalk and walked out of sight. His phone dinged, very softly, to let him know the download was done. Schmidt and his date were cleaning up, getting ready to pay and leave. Aiden wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there, but he needed to move, so he pushed up and away from the railing and headed inside the mall, where there was air conditioning. He wasn’t sure why seeing Jordi had unsettled him so much.

Then again, the last time they’d met face to face, Jordi had tried to kill him. That particular contract wasn’t out on him still, but Aiden knew there were others. In the last three years, the Vigilante had lost a lot of his public appeal, especially in the wake of DedSec’s grab for attention, but it would never be enough. Not for the scum he hunted. There was always the possibility that someone else would put a big enough price on his head and Aiden didn’t even have the dubious protection of his _own_ contract with Jordi for now.

No point in worrying about it. He’d keep an eye out, but it wasn’t likely that he’d run into the other fixer again. Tampa was big enough for two of them.

Hopefully.


	2. flow_

**August 22nd, 2016, 02:20**

 

Things were much worse than he’d thought.

Schmidt wasn’t some big-time mob boss like Quinn had been, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the sheer number of women he’d moved across the border. His businesses were fronts for some very minor money laundering, but his _real_ money—the money he kept in secured offshore accounts, the money that Aiden didn’t have access to other than through ghosts of transactions—came from the trafficking he was doing. As far as he could tell, Schmidt had switched focus the same year Ray Kenney had blacked out the entirety of the Northeast.

And he’d made bank off of it. People had been so focused on what Kenney had done, nobody had bothered to pay attention to the sharp uptick in trafficking in one city. Schmidt wasn’t working for any single cartel or gang. He was working for _all_ of them. Trafficking missing women out of the country. Trafficking kidnapped women into it. Tampa was his hub, but he had operations in Miami, Houston, as far north as Boston in some cases. It was a network that stretched all along the gulf coast and swung up into the Atlantic, and it looked like Schmidt was planning on expanding his interests.

Aiden rubbed at his eyes, leaning back into the creaky motel chair. The air conditioning barely worked in here, and the muggy summer air was still eating away at him. He hadn’t slept in days, too focused on getting Schmidt and still haunted by nightmares, and now he was beginning to regret it. Staring at the cheap laptop screen for hours hadn’t done anything to help, leaving his eyes dry and hot. He was almost down to his last cigarette in this pack, and the coffee was just bad enough that the thought of drinking it filled him with regret.

He hadn’t even remembered to bug Schmidt’s phone, too distracted by that brief glimpse of Jordi. It wasn’t a total loss, the man’s house was still open to ctOS and the cameras were running in a portion of Aiden’s screen, but it was an oversight. ctOS was a crutch and a tool, not an excuse to get lazy. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes like this.

Everyone in the Schmidt house was asleep now, even his daughter, home from college still. Aiden had wondered if she’d be up all night, but she’d gone to bed around midnight, an hour after the woman he hadn’t been able to find anything on. He had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to show up on _any_ records. That was a complication he’d deal with once he had a better idea of the scope of Schmidt’s operation; everything was too large, too spread out, too decentralized for him to pick a real target yet. How had no one caught this man before?

Aiden pressed his fingers to his eyelids, keeping the pressure up until stars sparked. It was silent in the motel room, the soft whir of his laptop fans his only company. He needed sleep. Maybe after he’d gotten Schmidt he’d just… take a break for a little bit. A day or two, before following his next lead. The weight of the women he could help tugged against the weight of the responsibilities he’d already taken on. But he couldn’t be useful like this, not when he was making mistakes.

“One thing at a time, Pearce,” he said, voice low in the silence of the room. “Take on the problem in front of you, and worry about everything else later. You’ve got this. You can take the bastard down.”

He couldn’t track Schmidt’s _exact_ movements, but he already had an idea of the man’s schedule. The phone had a calendar along with the rest of the files he’d been working through, and an operation on this scale lived and died by its paperwork. Bugging the phone would have helped, but it wasn’t necessary, not like the original hack had been. If Aiden could find the paper trail, then he could find Schmidt’s base of operations. And once he had _that_ … He could push some of the weight off, then.

Abandoning the rest of the files, Aiden started to dig through the calendar and the geotagging data he’d gotten off of Schmidt’s phone. The schedule was sparse in details, but cross referencing the data he was getting slowly constructed a map of Schmidt’s movements. Like his work schedule and daily luncheons, Schmidt was precise and specific with where he went and how long he spent—a week of observation hadn’t given him enough information, but months? Aiden could predict Schmidt’s travel plans better than _Schmidt_ could at this point. With one discrepancy.

There was an office Schmidt visited. Never the same time from week to week; sometimes it was once a day, sometimes Schmidt would go almost a month before heading there again. But always, _always_ after the lunch date, a lunch date that Aiden had watched happen and a lunch date that corresponded with a visit to the office that afternoon. If he’d followed Schmidt instead of heading back to his motel, he might have been able to see the man head into it himself.

It was the same woman, every time. He checked whether she’d dumped the phone or kept it, but luck wasn’t with him this time—her burner phone had been exactly that.

Same woman, and a mysterious office visit. Aiden could find cursory information on all the other fronts Schmidt visited, but not this one. Was the escort his contact? An intermediary for the buyer, so that Schmidt could send women on to whichever port wanted them? It was disgustingly efficient, and might explain why no one had caught him before now.

The bugged phone was a loss, and Aiden wasn’t certain the escort company would talk to him. So, the office. That was a safe bet, if Schmidt was so careful about when he went to it. And a guy this controlling would keep records. If Aiden wanted to figure out how he was moving the girls in the first place, that was where he needed to start.

Daytime would be his best bet, too. There were too many major companies sharing the building with Schmidt’s shell business, and they’d all have security crawling the building at night. It would be a pain in his ass to get in and out with the information if he had to kill his way through a horde of guards, but in the daylight? In the daylight he could be just another contractor, heading in for a meeting in a particular office. No one would notice. No one would care.

With a sigh, Aiden stood and dumped the coffee out. In the afternoon, then, just after lunch. That would give him a chance to confirm that Schmidt wasn’t heading in, and he’d just blend in with the crowd of businessmen. He’d blend in a little better with fewer bags under his eyes too, so he dropped down on the bed while the laptop whirred softly behind him.

Sleep, when it came, came uneasy; sometimes he was lucky enough to forget his nightmares, but they never stopped.

Waking was an issue, half-forgotten terrors clinging to his skin as he left the unhappy dreams behind, but a shower helped. The day was just as hot and muggy as before, even in the early morning, and Aiden wondered why the hell people lived here. At least Chicago eventually froze over.

He had a quick breakfast while double checking his GPS and travel times. Since he knew which escort was the contact now, he wouldn’t have to stay and watch Schmidt eat with her. That was better for him, and meant that if there _was_ an alarm, Schmidt might not even notice. He never looked at his phone when he was with his dates.

There was always a period of time between getting ready and actually springing into action where everything hovered in limbo. Aiden hated those moments—in Chicago, he’d picked up jobs, or hunted down criminals to keep himself occupied. Tampa had crime, but Aiden was trying to lay low for now; even if he kept to his timeframe, too much attention might alert Schmidt before Aiden had anything good. He couldn’t risk even a small op-ed on a sudden burst in crimefighting.

When his car crawled through the mall parking lot at two thirty, Schmidt was just walking into the restaurant with his date. The escort had flaming red hair, so she wasn’t the contact—just a working girl, though Aiden had his doubts as to whether or not it was her choice to be there. Either way, it wasn’t something he could fix right now, not without taking down the rest of Schmidt’s operation.

He turned and headed towards the marina, keeping to the speed limit and merging into traffic with ease. It was only a few minutes before he was slipping down a side road, pulling up into a parking garage and finding a spot. Staircases were his best bet and had the most empty spots around them—the elevators were clearly the premium parking in the area. The businessmen trailing into them were wearing everything from light linen suits to dark jackets like his own, despite the heat.

Aiden slipped in with a group of four headed down, nodding to one as he tucked his cap into his pocket. It made him uneasy to go with his eyes and mouth uncovered, but he’d be clocked in a second if he wore his usual costume into a place like this. The best disguise was anonymity, and his jacket was close enough to the wool overcoat of one of the other men that it would go unnoticed. At least he wasn’t the only one stupid enough to wear this many layers in this kind of heat. Aiden couldn’t imagine doing it _every day_.

Stepping out of the elevator and onto the sidewalk, he was hit with a strong breeze and the scent of ocean. A few hundred yards away, he could see boats docked to private decks along the side of a residential road. That was one escape route, if he was feeling ballsy enough to fight waters he wasn’t familiar with. The better option was probably the open-air parking lot, with the reserved spot for motorcycles; at least a few of the contractors liked to live dangerously, because there were several sport bikes mingled in with the cruisers. The cars were all SUVs, squished into spots almost too small for them, nothing easy to get out fast, but the motorcycles? Aiden knew he’d be untouchable on a bike like that.

The closer he got to the building with his group of men, the more security he could see. Covertly, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, brushing his fingers against the reassuring weight of his pistol as he did. The cameras were easy enough to hack into, but the story they told made Aiden uneasy. Umeni-Zulu was a sensible choice for a building with this many big names in it, but the number of them in the area was… concerning. There was no reason for a dozen guards to be patrolling the grounds of an office building.

The fact that the other men _also_ seemed uneasy didn’t help Aiden’s worries. This was out of the norm for them. If it weren’t for the fact that he _needed_ to get into Schmidt’s office, he call the whole thing off. He trusted his gut, and it was telling him nothing good right now.

His group got him through the front doors, then three of them split off towards first-floor offices. The fourth kept walking with him, headed towards the elevators in the back. Schmidt’s office was up on the third floor, tucked away near the fire exit stairs. Aiden couldn’t fault the man for wanting a quick escape, not when it gave _him_ one as well. Three guards between the front door and the elevator, but all of them seemed more interested in discussing the game tonight than the men walking into the building.

His companion in the elevator hit the second floor button, then the third when Aiden asked quietly. He was adjusting his tie over and over again, straightening his jacket lapels each time as well. Nerves. An important meeting, or the increased security detail? Aiden flicked a thumb over the screen of his phone, flipping between cameras. Two guards on the second floor and the fourth. Three on the third floor. Was it always an odd number of guards on odd floors, or was this something else?

The man got off on the second floor and Aiden reached forward to hit the ‘close doors’ button. Two guards chatting in the stairway, laughing about a show from last night. Third floor again. This wasn’t a coincidence.

His phone was a reassuring weight in one hand as he slipped the other into his pocket to grab his pistol. The suppressor threaded onto the barrel would give him a few extra minutes before people realized it was gunfire they were hearing. Those few minutes might be the difference between success and failure, though Aiden had the sinking feeling that his options were becoming _survival_ and failure. Too late to hit the button and head back down again. The guards on the first floor were watching the elevator doors now.

The three guards in the hallway all turned as the elevator doors dinged open, their hands dropping to the guns at their hips. Aiden dropped his eyes, using his phone to see as he walked down the hallway without looking at any of them. None of them drew, but they all tensed the closer he got to Schmidt’s office, only relaxing as he walked past the door to the only other firm this far down the hall.

“I think he’s here,” one of them said into a headpiece, unaware that Aiden was listening in. The guards in the stairwell turned, and the ones on the other floors started converging on the elevators. This was a _personal_ welcoming committee, then.

With a final glance at the parking garage cameras—his car was, predictably, already surrounded by the particular matte black vehicles that fixers preferred—he dropped his phone into his pocket and reached for the tech firm door. Then, faster than the guards in the hall could react, he yanked it open and ducked behind it, drawing his pistol and firing. Two in the throat, one in the shoulder. The one who’d been hit in the shoulder dropped with a yell of pain, and Aiden’s fourth shot hit him in the head.

His element of surprise was gone, but that was to be expected.

Now that the promise of violence had been fulfilled, all the stress and anxiety melted away. There was a clear, bright line between him and his objective: survival. Schmidt’s office was a bust, and there was no point in pushing his luck with the hope that he could get anything worthwhile as mercenaries filled him with bullets. No, Aiden was going to have to kill his way out, and the certainty of that fact filled him with a dreamy sort of calm.

In his bubble of violent tranquility, Aiden checked his rounds, then shot the fourth guard in the eye as he slammed through the fire escape door. The fifth fell down the stairs, weighed down by the body of his coworker; Aiden put him out of his misery on his way down, one round in the heart as he leapt over the railing to the first floor.

No one at the door to the front, but a guard between him and the parking lot—he took the risk and wasted his last two bullets on him, one in the knee and one in the forehead, the glass door shattering as Aiden shot his way through it. He jumped over the body, shoving his pistol back in his pocket and heading straight for the fastest bike in the group, a small bodied but vicious looking racer with ctOS routed into it. It was a matter of seconds to turn it on, peeling out of the parking lot as three SUVs came swerving out of the garage behind him.

He nearly hit the ground as he took a left turn too quickly, bullets whipping past him as he hit the throttle and shot down the side road leading to the major one he was aiming for. Seven lights between him and the highway, with fixers on his tail the whole way. No reason to make things easy for them, even if the traffic wasn’t the best for what Aiden intended to do.

The lights turned red as he shot through them, and the last SUV in the group was put out of commission by a truck paying more attention to the light than the road. Two more to go, and Aiden needed to make sure they couldn’t call for reinforcements. No chance to grab his phone and jam their comms, but if he kept them on their toes, maybe he wouldn’t have to.

The second SUV spun out trying to chase him around a turn, but it recovered. Aiden took the entrance ramp doing fifty, flying past the other cars trying to merge onto the interstate. Both SUVs were falling behind, but not far _enough_ behind for his comfort, so Aiden shot left into traffic and gunned it.

Rush hour was just starting to hit its peak, the lanes filling up with cars doing fifty or less, nearly bumper to bumper in places. A sedan couldn’t have fit through them, much less the heavy SUVs that the fixers were driving, but Aiden could slip between cars with ease. He nearly took out a few mirrors, but it wasn’t anything he was worried about, all of his attention on the road in front of him and the comms chatter in his ear.

There was a blare of horns from behind him—one of the SUVs had gotten impatient and decided to ram its way through the traffic between them. Still too slow compared to Aiden, though he hadn’t stopped them from calling for help. Dark cars came flying up other entrance ramps after him, though no one could quite get a fix on his position. Perfect.

Aiden slid between a lifted truck and a semi, settling in the middle lane. The chatter was getting louder and more frustrated, fixers and Umeni-Zulu guards trying to coordinate to cut him off. They didn’t know which way he was going, and he wasn’t giving them any clues, trying to hide behind larger cars and break their line of sight. The consensus eventually shook out to north 275, the easier route to take if he was going to go ducking back into the city again. He’d have to disappoint them. What a shame.

At the last second, he took the shoulder heading east, still hidden behind the bulk of the truck he’d been cruising beside. None of the fixers had noticed his change in direction, and he opened up the throttle again, sliding right into the lane, and then deeper into traffic. The further away he got, the less chatter he could hear, until eventually the lines went silent—he’d lost them.

It gave him a moment to breathe as he dropped his speed, settling in the right lane and keeping an eye out for his exit. Slowly, he became aware of a burning sensation in his leg, viciously sharp and bright against of the fog of his usual aches and pains. One of the bullets must have winged him, but hopefully he wasn’t bleeding. Hopefully.

Damn. Usually he would loop around the long way, take maybe an hour just to be sure but they’d known he was coming—and they shouldn’t have. Aiden had been careful, hadn’t let Schmidt see him, and those guards couldn’t have shown up within the few minutes it took for him to reach the marina from the mall. His motel. He couldn’t afford to leave the laptop in there, not if Schmidt was tracking him somehow.

He swung sharply right again, ignoring the panicked blare of horns behind him, and took a nearer exit ramp. For now, he’d have to take action over caution. The motel wasn’t safe, not if they had eyes on him somehow, but he could be packed and going within minutes. There had to be a hotel with openings, with the weekend over and the rooms empty. He’d hole up somewhere new and figure this out.

The motel parking lot was empty, but Aiden didn’t assume that meant it was safe. He was packed and gone within minutes, his laptop safely stowed away in his bag with the rest of his weapons and spare clothes. The girl at the desk had given his leg a long look, and had only looked disturbed when he tried to smile at her, so Aiden was taking that to mean that he needed to see to his leg and the bullet burn that tore through his jeans.

There was a cheap hotel not too far away. More questions than a motel, but harder to pin him down, too. It would do, for now. He needed air conditioning, a second to catch his breath, and most importantly, _answers_.

They’d known he was coming. Aiden had every intention of finding out how.


	3. swell_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's where things start deserving that E rating up there. I waffled for a bit on whether or not to add a dubcon tag because these two assholes are about to have the world's dumbest miscommunication error, but ultimately the issue is how *informed* Aiden's consent is, not how willing he actually is for the acts that follow. That said, keep it in mind if people getting in over their heads with sex is an issue for you.

**August 22nd, 2016, 19:23**

 

Of course, shit could never go right for him. Less than five hours after he’d checked into this hotel, cars had pulled up into the parking lot. Multiple. None of them had Umeni-Zulu tags, but it was pretty easy to see the unifying factor there: Schmidt. He’d already dug through his laptop and cellphone both, looking for any trackers, but there was nothing. Right now, Aiden had to assume that Schmidt had ctOS access and knew enough about Aiden’s particular brand of signal scrambling to look for _that_ instead of facial recognition.

He hadn’t even gotten a chance to do anything with his leg other than slap a gauze pad over it. A quick check on the cameras showed that the elevators and stairwells were already occupied on the bottom floor. That left up.  
  
A three-story building like this one wasn’t too high to jump from if he did it right. Might still break a leg, but Aiden was pretty sure he’d seen a tree that he could use to climb down on. It was part of why he’d chosen a hotel like this one, tall enough to give him a couple seconds of leeway but not so high that he couldn’t make his way down from the roof.

It was just his luck that he hadn’t been the only one to think of the roof.

“Took you long enough!” The jovial tones were grating and familiar, but Aiden couldn’t exactly head back _down_. Not without more risk to himself than he was willing to gamble on right now, and at least Jordi was the devil he knew. “Seriously, I’ve been up here for an hour now. I thought you’d have jumped twenty minutes ago.”

Aiden ignored him, grimly heading across the roof toward the beckoning tree branches he’d thought of. They were thick enough around to hold him, and it wasn’t like the fixers would think to look _up_. But he’d forgotten that Jordi hated being ignored, and didn’t react quick enough to dodge the heavy hand that slammed down on his shoulder.

“You know Pearce, you can try _not_ being a giant dick for three seconds. I promise it won’t kill you.” Jordi’s voice pitched up in irritation, though his face didn’t show it. He was in a dangerous mood.

“What, but you might?” Aiden didn’t even bother to hide the exasperation in his voice, half turning to glare at the fingers digging into his jacket. Jordi had one of those shit-eating grins on his face again, the one that spelled trouble for whoever was the focus of his attention today. Aiden had a bad feeling he knew _exactly_ which person Jordi had his sights on.

“I might. But seriously, what the fuck are you doing? Because buddy, let me tell you, someone wants you _dead_.”

That was all Aiden needed to hear—last time Jordi had said something like that, he’d pointed a gun at him too. He didn’t have the leverage to toss Jordi, but he _did_ have less than a foot between them and the tree he was aiming for. With a grab at Jordi’s arm and a sharp heave, Aiden sent them both off the roof, slamming into the tree with a grunt of pain before letting himself drop in a slightly more controlled way. By the time he hit the ground, his ribs were bruised and his leg was screaming at him, torn open again on the way down and bleeding a hell of a lot worse than it had been before.

“Jesus christ!” And Jordi was still alive. _Fantastic_.

Aiden didn’t get a chance to reflect on his run of bad luck, because a Jordi had a hand locked in the collar of his jacket and was hauling him up and towards a car with dark-tinted windows. Hell, was this a retrieval job? He was shoved into the back before he could break Jordi’s grip, and by that point the other fixers had started to patrol the perimeter of the hotel too.

There was no way he could take all of them on _and_ Jordi. So rather than make a run for it, he slumped back into his seat, yanking his hat off and dragging his fingers through his hair. Jordi was talking, but Jordi was _always_ talking—he’d gotten good at tuning it out. This was probably important enough to listen to, but Aiden couldn’t bring himself to care, eyes closed and muscles aching with everything he’d done already. It sounded like the usual stream of chatter and complaints.

Eventually it tapered off, replaced by the faint sound of a local top twenties station. The sun was setting, sending dim light through the tinted windows, painting the back of his eyelids red. It could almost be peaceful, if Aiden wasn’t certain that this was leading to his inevitable death, but the longer Jordi kept him around for whatever reason, the longer he had to gather his thoughts and formulate a plan.

He only opened his eyes once the distinct feel of a parking garage enveloped them. They were further downtown now, if Aiden was any judge, in one of the _nice_ hotels. The ones used by tourists and the big conventions that occasionally rolled through. Nothing too fancy, not so expensive as to be notable, but the sort of place that a guy in a suit could walk into and feel at home in. It was very… Jordi.

“You didn’t hear a single fucking word I said, did you?” Jordi’s voice was acidic, so Aiden tore his gaze away from the connecting hotel long enough to get a good look at his face. Yeah, that was Jordi’s angry face.

“Nope,” he admitted, shifting more upright and hissing softly as fire lanced up his thigh. “Not a damn thing. Is this the part where you tell me why you’re killing me?”

“No, this is the part where I drag your dumb ass up to my room and you do something about that leg. I can’t believe this. I go out of my way to rescue you, and this is the thanks I get?”

That surprised him enough that Aiden didn’t have a witty retort, leaving him staring blankly after Jordi as the fixer climbed out of the car. After a couple seconds, he followed, grunting in pain as his leg protested having weight put on it. He shifted his bag so it was set more comfortably over his shoulder, then forced himself to stop limping as he caught up. Hopefully the laptop hadn’t snapped on the way down.

Jordi was silent as they walked into the hotel, taking him back to the elevators and then up to one of the top floors. It wasn’t so late that they were the only ones around, but most everyone was still heading _out_ , not back in. They had the elevator to themselves, and the hall was empty when Jordi finally stepped out and headed down to the door for his suite.

It was a standard room, except for the rifle case open on one half of the bed. Aiden wasn’t sure if he was comforted by the fact that the rifle in question was mostly disassembled and still waiting to be cleaned. He didn’t get a chance to ask about it either, because Jordi stopped only long enough to shove a first-aid kit into his hands before leaving again, the door locking with a soft click behind him.

Moving slowly, he sat on the edge of the bed, shrugging out of his jacket and kicking off his shoes. Probably wasn’t the brightest idea to leave himself vulnerable like that but… if Jordi was going to kill him, at this point Aiden might not be able to stop him. He was running on fumes, and not the kind that gave him an extra boost of energy either. With a soft grunt, he set his bag down next to the mattress, then peeled his pants off, hissing quietly as the denim dragged over the mess of scabbing and still bleeding flesh on his injured thigh.

First things first, he needed to get this clean. Thankfully, this was one of Jordi’s high grade first aid kits. Alcohol, thread, needles, antibiotics in three different flavors—short of an x-ray machine or an IV, it held about anything a fixer in a bind might need. Aiden fell into the rhythm of cleaning the wound out, making a face when he realized just how much moving around had torn it open; it would have been just a nasty burn if he hadn’t insisted on running and jumping around like he had something to prove. Once it was as clean as it would get, he threaded the needle and went to work, gritting his teeth at the steady, insistent pain.

"So, do you want to take a guess at how many zeroes are following your name right this moment?"

It was a measure of how tired he was that Aiden didn’t jump—and that he hadn’t heard Jordi come back in in the first place. He groaned and snapped the thread he'd been using to stitch up his leg, then hunted around for something to smear on the angry skin around the dark thread. Jordi was wearing that expression that said 'I know something you don't and I'm pissed about it', which wasn’t a comforting thing to see on the face of a guy who'd tried to kill him twice now. Maybe twice. Aiden wasn’t positive where this latest scuffle fell on the Jordi scale of attempted murder.

"It's not three zeroes. It's not four zeroes!" Oh, good, he was working himself up into either a rant or a story. He’d go on forever if Aiden let him, and right now Aiden wasn’t feeling up to stopping it. Better to let him get it out of his system. "No, no, Pearce, we are not talking mere thousands. We're talking seven fucking zeroes! Someone out there is pissed enough to pay _sixty million dollars_ for me to kill your ass. Now, tell me why I'm not taking the money and doing that right now."

"Because the last two times you tried, I threw you off a building?" Aiden looked up from applying a topical antibacterial cream, too tired to even protest anymore.

" _Because—_ and this is a critical point here, so pay attention—because this _fuckhead_ trying to wave money in front of my nose has cheaped out on me already. I get the payment upfront, right, and what do I find? The funds he was trying to play at sending me were fucking seized by the FBI. He tried to send me dirty money, Pearce, dirty money that wasn’t even _there_ , using some other shithead's bank account, to a routing number he _knew_ they'd track. So yeah, I'm a little pissed about this. The question you should be asking yourself is this: how many zeroes is it going to take to get _me_ on _your_ side when you inevitably take this to the top and kill this guy sticking money on your head too?"

With another groan, Aiden heaved himself up off the hotel bed. The leg wasn’t happy about it, but it would hold for now. Jordi was holding his phone out in accusation, like it was _Aiden_ ’ _s_ fault that Schmidt had apparently tried to cheat him once already. But if Jordi was already halfway to sending a message, that was something he could use—and that explained almost everything that hadn’t fit. It was only a couple more steps, and then he was right in the other fixer’s space, close enough to touch.

He grabbed Jordi's suit by the lapels, pushing him back against the wall and kissing him. It wasn't one of his finest, too much lips and Jordi a solid steel beam of pure tension against him, but it got the message across. Aiden pulled away just far enough to breathe, "That's gotta be worth a couple zeroes, right?"

Honestly, he was half-expecting Jordi to throw him out the window for that. The guy wasn’t exactly known for being patient with fools. So it figured that Jordi busted up laughing and tugged him closer instead, pulling some of the weight off of Aiden's injured leg. It was enough of a relief that Aiden didn’t protest beyond a faint grimace when Jordi used his new leverage to swap them, pinning Aiden to the wall with a thigh firmly between his legs.

"You know, normally I'd tell you that a kiss that shitty was worth negative dollars," Jordi said with a grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling at the expression Aiden gave him, "but I'm liking this new, sexually aggressive you. So we'll say it's worth a whole fucking grand."

"I'm touched."

"You should be."

Aiden couldn’t help but crack a wry smile at that, which seemed to be all the encouragement Jordi needed to press forward into another kiss. His earlier kiss paled in comparison, a weak passionless thing that had been more of a question than anything else. Jordi wasn’t asking. Jordi _took_ , pressing him into the wall and thrusting his tongue into Aiden’s mouth like a force of nature, spurred on by the way he kissed back. There were worse ways to drown than this, Jordi’s hands already roaming and grabbing at the taut muscles in Aiden’s thighs.

He let out a soft hiss when Jordi’s fingers brushed too close to the stitches, a sharp flare of pain shooting up his thigh, then groaned when Jordi did it _again_ while grinding his own thigh into Aiden’s crotch. It hadn’t seemed important when he’d started this, but Aiden was abruptly aware of the fact that he was half naked while Jordi barely even looked disheveled in that goddamn suit of his. His fingers were still curled in Jordi’s lapels, so Aiden crushed the fabric harder, yanking Jordi closer still and biting his lip in sharp revenge.

“ _There_ you are, Pearce,” Jordi said, voice low and dark with pleasure, his hands sliding lower still until he lifted Aiden up just long enough to stumble a couple steps back to the bed. Even that small show of force was enough to make Aiden’s cock jump, a surge of arousal leaving him breathless as he moaned into Jordi’s lip.

The rifle was presenting a problem. So were Jordi’s clothes, for that matter, and Aiden wasn’t happy about those buttons on the _best_ of days, much less now. He gave it his best shot, fumbling at Jordi’s shirt as he rolled his hips down against the erection he could feel pressing into his thigh. “Anybody ever tell you that you wear too many goddamn clothes, Jordi?”

“Oh fuck you, Pearce. Like you’re one to talk.” A grin slashed across Jordi’s face as he shoved Aiden’s hands out of the way, undoing his shirt and tugging it free of his pants. He shrugged out of it and the jacket in one movement, tossing them both on the floor before grabbing Aiden by the hips and swinging him into the bed, ignoring the indignant grunt he made in favor of yanking his underwear off.

“You know, usually the shirt comes off first,” Aiden said, not quite managing to sound annoyed as Jordi’s palm slid over his length, thumb pressing into the vein at the base. It had been _years_ since he’d been touched like this, since he’d bothered to even touch _himself_ like this, and Aiden was a little embarrassed by how easily it showed. Not embarrassed enough to keep himself from lifting his hips up in a silent plea, one of his hands grabbing at Jordi’s wrist to keep him from pulling away.

It didn’t do much; Jordi gave him a couple lazy strokes, then shook Aiden’s hand off and started hunting around in the side table. Aiden was about to ask how many people he’d fucked in the bed already when Jordi pulled out a condom and some lube, tossing the bottle at him without warning. He nearly fumbled it off the bed, then rolled his eyes at the smirk Jordi gave him. Asshole.

“Go ahead and get yourself stretched, I’ve got no idea how big of a virgin you are.” Jordi’s voice was smug, which pissed him off. The fact that he was dangerously close to touching on how long it had been only pissed him off _more_ , because there was no reason for Jordi to be right about something like that. Aiden made a point of flipping him off even as he popped the bottle open, dumping plenty of lube on his fingers.

“I usually top, you know.” It was hard to sound cool and collected when Jordi was looming over him like that and his fingers were teasing at his own hole. Aiden was taking it slow, because he knew his limits, but the look Jordi was giving him made it tempting to just throw caution to the wind. But if he wanted to get _anything_ done tomorrow, he couldn’t do that—not with a bullet wound in his thigh as well. So he stuck to one finger for now, the faintest of shivers trembling through him as he met Jordi’s gaze defiantly, like he wasn’t fingerfucking himself in front of the man. “Just throwing that out there.”

“You, really? Could’ve fooled me.” Smug shit that he was, Jordi didn’t even have the decency to pretend like he wasn’t mocking him. Aiden would be more upset about that if it weren’t coming in combination with Jordi shoving his own pants down and visibly teasing himself, cock dark and standing at attention.

His eyes were locked on that cock, another finger pushing up into himself as Aiden arched a little without thinking. He hadn’t thought of this in a long time; beyond touching himself, he hadn’t even let himself consider other men, caught up in a cycle of anger and shame after Damien. With everything that had come from that, it felt wrong to even think about anyone else—at first, because it would have been disrespecting Lena’s memory, then later because there just wasn’t the time to even consider one-night stands. Especially not after his face was plastered on every television in Chicago and a few outside of it. Too risky, when every man in a bar could be a fixer or just some hothead looking to prove a point.

Jordi, though. He wasn’t trustworthy, not by a long shot, and the only moral compass he had was paid by the hour, but Aiden _knew_ Jordi. If the man wanted him for a job, then he was going to live through the night. For once he could just let someone else take charge again, relax for a little bit—Jordi was _damn_ good at his job, and even if Aiden wasn’t paying him, the man kept his word.

The feeling of hands sliding up his thighs jolted Aiden out of his thoughts, a startled twitch rolling through him. At some point, he’d started fingering himself in earnest, and Jordi had a calculating look in his eyes. Aiden wasn’t sure if he liked that, didn’t know if that spelled trouble—who was he kidding. With Jordi? It _always_ meant trouble. But right now, a little bit of trouble was exactly what he wanted.

“You know the stoplight system?” Jordi asked out of nowhere, a thumb running over the edge of Aiden’s stitches. It made him blink in surprise, even as a spark of pain flared at the point of pressure, and his brow furrowed a little.

“Yes?” he ventured, not entirely sure what stoplights had to do with what they were doing here.

“Perfect,” said Jordi, reaching for the bottom of his shirt. Aiden pulled his fingers free, then made a noise of irritation as his shirt was pulled up high enough to trap his arms and then _knotted_ there, hooked over a bit of the headboard that kept him from reaching the knot as easily. A little bit of warning would have been nice at least. He tested the strength of the shirt, then gave Jordi a dirty look.

“This how you get your rocks off?” he asked, voice sour.

“It’s one of the ways.”

Before he could snipe back, Jordi spread his legs wide, settling between them with a grin and a lazy stroke of Aiden’s cock. He grunted and lifted his hips in response, tugging on his shirt automatically before making a face. It would probably help if Jordi actually _touched_ him, anywhere at all, but the bastard kept doing these light little strokes, like he thought it was funny to watch Aiden jerk his hips helplessly. Knowing Jordi, he probably _did_ think it was funny.

Funny or not, Jordi wasn’t _doing_ anything to him. Wasn’t fucking him, was _barely_ touching him, didn’t seem too inclined to start any time soon. Aiden rolled his hips again, demandingly, then thumped his head back with a groan when Jordi pulled away in retaliation. Wasn’t the whole _point_ of having sex to… have sex? Apparently not according to Jordi.

The worst part was, the more Jordi kept to those light touches, the harder Aiden got, cock twitching every time Jordi barely brushed it. He could tear his way free of his shirt, no problem, but that meant he’d have to _think_ about it. And the longer Jordi kept him trapped like this, the harder it was to think. Or plan. Or do anything other than lift his hips in silent desperation and bite back the urge to plead with Jordi. If nothing else, Aiden was _damn_ sure he wasn’t going to beg. He wasn’t going to give Jordi the satisfaction.

But god, it was killing him.

“You know, I was expecting you to be a little bitchier about this,” Jordi said, startling Aiden out of his frustrated reverie. His thighs were trembling, muscles taut with tension as his body bowed up towards the hand just barely resting on his stomach. Jordi’s fingers drummed against his skin, the look on his face calculating. It was harder to focus than Aiden liked to admit, his attention always trailing back to wherever Jordi’s hands were at that moment.

“Yeah?” he managed after clearing his throat, wincing at how rough his voice sounded.

“This really does it for you, doesn’t it? I expected you to be a rough and tumble kind of guy, but I bet you go all sensitive and gooey with the right effort.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Aiden snapped, the haze clearing long enough for him to glare at Jordi and start pulling his legs shut. Not that he had anywhere to go, or really the energy to _do_ anything about it, but damn if he was going to let Jordi make fun of him while _not_ touching his dick.

Jordi, like the asshole he was, just laughed, grabbing Aiden’s legs and shoving them wider apart. His palms were like fire searing into Aiden’s skin, and the sudden movement jostled the stitches enough to make him gasp. It didn’t matter how quickly he bit down on his lip after—the sound was out, and Jordi looked entirely too pleased to have gotten that much. Aiden shut his eyes and thumped his head back against the headboard again, trying to fight down the desperation that had welled up once more.

“C’mon. I can see it in your face, Pearce, you wanna beg for it. It’s not even that big of a deal—just drop the tough guy act and lemme see the person underneath. It’s not that much to ask.”

Even with his eyes closed, Aiden couldn’t block out how _smug_ Jordi sounded. And the worst part was, he could feel his own resistance crumbling. Maybe if Jordi weren’t touching him so _gently_ , if his fingers weren’t smearing precome down Aiden’s length without giving him any pressure, if his palms weren’t so damn _hot_ against his skin—maybe if none of those things were true, he’d be able to hold steady. If he could just take a second to recenter himself and find his balance again, he’d be able to laugh about it and ignore just how badly he needed this. But Jordi wasn’t going to give him that.

“Fuck,” he said, voice hitching on the word as Jordi’s palm cupped his balls. “Fucking _shit_. I’m not—I’m not going to beg.”

“You’re not?” The palm slid lower, Jordi’s fingers gliding over his hole, and Aiden hated himself a little for the noise he made at that.

“I’m _not_.” Aiden bit the words out, locking his jaw to try and keep himself from moaning.

“That’s a shame.” He wasn’t given a chance to respond, Jordi’s fingers sliding into him without hesitation. Aiden gasped again, lifting his hips as Jordi spread him wide, testing just how well he’d stretched himself earlier.

He’d been able to finger himself without thinking about it too hard, so focused on Jordi that he wasn’t paying attention to how his body reacted. But Aiden didn’t have that luxury now—focusing on Jordi meant focusing on the fingers inside of him, on the hand now pressed into his stomach and holding him down. Aiden yanked at his arms where they were trapped in the knot of his shirt, but it was no use. He couldn’t get free and he couldn’t escape the slow, lazy stretch of Jordi’s fingers, fucking him gently and never quite delving deep enough.

It was taking all of his concentration to stay silent, and Jordi seemed intent upon breaking him. Aiden’s muscles were trembling, hips twitching desperately as he tried to force Jordi’s fingers deeper. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth as he bit down on his tongue, fighting back the urge to moan. He refused to open his eyes, because he _knew_ exactly the expression Jordi would be wearing, and Aiden knew that if he let himself start talking, he’d never stop. This is what Jordi wanted, for him to break, for him to _beg_ and Aiden…

Aiden could feel himself slipping. A dark, traitorous part of him wanted to break just as badly.

A soft, needy noise escaped past his tightly pressed lips and he jerked when Jordi rewarded him with a harder thrust of his fingers. He could feel himself cracking a little more, fingers twisting and grabbing at the fabric of his shirt. If Jordi’s fingers could do this much to him, what could his _cock_ accomplish?

“ _Fuck_ , Jordi.” His voice cracked on Jordi’s name, rough and desperate. Jordi, being the bastard he was, pulled his hands away entirely, and Aiden’s eyes snapped open as he lifted his hips helplessly. “ _Fuck_ , fuck you, don’t dare—”

“That’s not begging. You’re _really_ bad at this, you know that?” Jordi grinned at him, reaching for his own cock with that smug look at his face, and Aiden broke.  There were some tortures he could take, but watching Jordi jerk off and _not touch him_ wasn’t one of them.

“ _Please_ ,” he said, yanking at his shirt helplessly. “Please fuck me, okay? Is that—Is that what you wanted to hear? _Please_ , Jordi, I need your cock, I need—”

Aiden cut off with a gasp, arching up off the bed as Jordi’s hand returned with a vengeance, fingers curling around his cock and stroking. He thumped back against the headboard, legs falling apart as Jordi surged forward into a kiss that was more teeth than anything. Going from no sensation to a glut of it left him reeling, fingers clenching and unclenching in the fabric of his shirt as he moaned.

If he’d thought that Jordi was going to give him a chance to breathe, he was wrong. Jordi only pulled away long enough to bite his way down Aiden’s neck, hauling his hips up and sinking his cock into Aiden at the same moment he sank his teeth into him. The dual sensation was overwhelming, Aiden’s voice cracking again as he tipped his back to give Jordi better access to his neck. To his everything, if he was honest with himself—Jordi fucked him like he wanted to eat Aiden alive, and Aiden was more than willing to let him.

Blunt nails dragging up the backs of his thighs made him gasp, the sharp pain pulling his scattered attention even further apart. With each hard thrust, he unraveled more, fingers clutching at fabric helplessly. Jordi’s beard scraped at his skin as his teeth left marks all over his shoulders, his fingers bruising Aiden’s hips and thighs as they dug in. All the points of pain began to bleed into each other, into the pleasure of Jordi’s cock splitting him open again and again, and Aiden let go completely dropping into the tide of sensation washing over him.

He didn’t have to think at all. He was an object to be used, completely dependent on Jordi for anything he could get, and the freedom was breathtaking. Aiden moaned, his legs wrapped tight around Jordi’s waist, his heels digging into Jordi’s lower back.

Jordi’s thrusts were coming hard and fast, driving Aiden deeper and deeper into the overwhelming sea of pleasure. He wasn’t yanking at the fabric of his shirt anymore; he was clinging to it as a lifeline, the only thing keeping him from drowning in Jordi. Jordi’s hands, Jordi’s mouth, Jordi’s _cock_ —Aiden’s voice broke on Jordi’s name, lips forming it over and over again like a prayer.

He came with a desperate, pleading gasp, his thighs clenching around Jordi’s waist as everything went bright and hot. But Jordi wasn’t done, and Aiden couldn’t come back down from that high, pleasure spiking through him with each hard thrust. It didn’t _matter_ whether he’d come or not, because _Aiden_ didn’t matter. He was here for Jordi’s use and Jordi’s desires, a thought that floated to the surface on the sea of sharp-edged hunger welling over him.

It was so easy to fall into the comfort of that fact and the way Jordi made it _true_. Aiden moaned helplessly, muscles slack and body eager under Jordi as he rocked back into the hard thrusts, letting the bliss wash over him. Time was meaningless; he could be here forever for all he cared, and that would be _right_.

Jordi shuddered and drove in deep, grinding into Aiden hard enough to earn a gasp. Then finally, he went limp, a heavy weight on top of him, straining Aiden’s shoulders a little, though he was beyond caring. If Jordi wanted to stay on top of him, that was fine. Anything to keep this wonderful feeling of floating.

He was only half-aware of Jordi pulling out and off of him, fingers gently untying his shirt and checking Aiden’s wrists over for marks. He made a soft noise of frustration when Jordi stopped touching him, but couldn’t work up the energy to sit up and do anything about it. His limbs felt like they were weighted with lead, slow to respond and too heavy to bother with in the first place, but the various aches of the day weren’t there anymore. It was like being high, except he knew he hadn’t taken anything.

Jordi moved the rifle case off the bed, then dragged Aiden under the covers. He went willingly, relaxed and all too happy to touch Jordi’s skin again. When Jordi kissed him, Aiden sighed, shutting his eyes and kissing back. This was the best he’d felt in a long time. As long as he could remember, maybe.

He fell asleep like that, pressed against Jordi like he was the only solid thing left in the world.


	4. crest_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some warnings for this one: referenced previous Damien/Aiden (this may have come up before, but it gets explicit here) and more of the dubcon warnings from the previous chapter; this time it's the flavor of 'ignoring an unstated boundary', and some sexually-charged violence leading up to it.
> 
> On the bright side, at least they're talking now! Yaaaaay, communication.

**August 23rd, 2016, 01:04**

 

“So, tell me about Frankie here.”

Aiden groaned softly into the pillow, stretching out. He felt better after his nap, though the various aches from the day combined with the rough sex left him wondering if moving was worth it. Jordi thumped onto the bed next to him, then shifted to press against his back, one heavy arm slung over Aiden’s side. It had been a long time since he’d slept with someone. Aiden was alarmed to realize that he’d missed it.

The fingers drumming irritably on his stomach distracted him for a couple seconds, then Aiden remembered that Jordi had asked something. _Demanded_ something, but for Jordi the two were usually the same thing. With a sigh, he leaned into the warmth against his back, turning his head so that he wasn’t just talking into his pillow.

“He’s a supplier. Middleman. Moves the girls around along the coast and works with transporters at a couple ports to get them further inland.” Aiden’s lips twisted in frustration over that. This hydra was going to have a lot of heads to clean up once he’d gotten rid of Schmidt. “Operating for over a decade, and he’s got a bunch of shell companies in this area. It’s his main base, which means it’s where I can hit the hardest.”

Jordi grunted, beard scratching against one of the bruises on Aiden’s shoulder. “Doing anything fancy with football?”

“He kickstarted this whole business during the Superbowl, if that’s what you mean.” Aiden wasn’t sure what football had to do with any of this, but he was willing to play along. Maybe that was why Jordi was in town.

“Nah, had me killing some linebacker before he fucked me.” Bingo.

“Had fun?” The question was idle, but Jordi _had_ been cleaning the rifle. Aiden was pretty sure he would have heard about it if a football player had been shot, which meant Jordi had done something to cover that up. Suicide, maybe? Hard to set that up with a high caliber bullet, people didn’t usually kill themselves from four hundred yards away, but if anyone could do it, it was Jordi.

“Mm, I hate boats. Got him good on the yacht though, and the sound of the water muffled the hit like a treat. Everyone figured he got too drunk and fell off, all the muscle sank him like a goddamn stone, and it’ll be _weeks_ before they manage to find his head, if ever. What a shame.”

Teeth pressed into his skin for a second as Jordi grinned into his shoulder, and Aiden’s heart stuttered. He was too old to be spending all night rolling around in the sheets, but hell if Jordi didn’t make the idea appealing. It was ridiculous—he was covered in bruises, the stitches in his thigh were a quiet, dragging pain, and Jordi’s mouth promised violence and passion in equal turns. Why did he want it so bad?

“Anyways, it got reported as a horrific accident, the shithead driving _my_ boat nearly wrecked three times, and I got back to my room just in time to find out that Frankie was trying to _fuck_ me. I’m pretty pissed about it, actually, because I would’ve just dropped the contract if I’d known.”

Aiden forced his attention back to Jordi’s ramble, trying to ignore the hand tracing trajectories on his stomach. Jordi talked with his hands; apparently that didn’t change if his hands were _on_ someone at the time.

“So, I’m thinking, shit, now I have to go and send a _message_ , and it’s not like I object to that but it’s a goddamn waste of my time, right? And then, what do I see? Channel 13 News, some kind of car chase that leaves six different wrecks, police can’t find the bastards that were hitting and running, but _somebody_ caught video of a guy on a motorcycle in front of it all.”

Damn. _Damn_. Aiden shut his eyes for a couple seconds and breathed in, trying to push back the rage that surged up. He’d been so focused on not getting caught, and he’d ended up on fucking _live television_ instead. Too much to hope for that Jordi was the only one that spotted him, and no wonder they figured out where he was headed. Schmidt was going to be on guard now, even more than he already was. Would he even be able to get close to the office again? Would there even be anything _left_?

Fingers snapping right in front of his face startled him enough that he jumped, eyes flying open again. “What the fuck?”

“I _said_ , Earth the Pearce, are you listening? Jesus, you’re a headcase. Don’t _worry_ , I just followed the guys following _you_.” Jordi sounded irritated now. Great.

“Is that supposed to be _comforting_?” Aiden asked, a little more snappishly than he meant to.

“Bitchy! Look, however they’re tracing you, they haven’t come here, right? So we fooled them for a bit. Take a couple days, lie low, figure it out, and _then_ we can hit them back and you can get me my money. Capisce?” Jordi nipped at the edge of Aiden’s jaw for emphasis, his hand returning to Aiden’s stomach. It was bullshit attempt at comfort, but he forced himself to relax anyways.

Nothing he could do about it now. And Jordi was right, they hadn’t come to the hotel yet. Aiden _knew_ his phone and laptop were clean, which meant someone had traced him through ctOS. It was the only explanation. Was his access out of date? There weren’t any cameras in the hotel room, so he couldn’t check to see if his scrambler was still working.

That was something that could be traced too, if you know what you were doing. No way to identify the person using it, but the specific frequencies? Those could be flagged. It didn’t explain why they hadn’t caught him the moment he walked into the hotel lobby, with its cameras and high volume of residents, but maybe they’d lost him in Jordi’s car. The windows had been tinted, and Aiden couldn’t remember if there were cameras on the side of that they’d fallen off of.

He was trying to decide what frequencies he should switch—if he should try and change his scrambling method entirely—when Jordi’s hand slid lower still and derailed his train of thought entirely. There was no way the other fixer was _that_ much younger than him, and Aiden was pretty sure he hadn’t had sex more than once in a night in… ever, actually, Damien had been uninterested in him when Aiden wasn’t dancing to his tune. He tried to roll over and give Jordi an incredulous look, but there was nowhere to go.

And most unbelievable of all, Aiden could feel himself _responding_.

“You’re joking,” he said, still trying to turn his head and catch a glimpse of Jordi’s face. No luck.

Jordi’s fingers were teasing at him, thumb rubbing at his foreskin and pulling it back from the head. Aiden hated that he was getting hard just from a little fondling, but his body remembered everything else that had followed. Frustrated that Jordi could play with him so _easily_ , he rocked back, grinding down against Jordi’s groin in revenge—it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the other man was hard too, but Aiden was still in shock that _he_ had any juice left.

“Jordi—” Aiden started, then grunted in surprise when Jordi’s other hand grabbed his hair and _pulled_. His scalp lit up with pain and he grabbed at Jordi’s wrist, digging his nails into the flesh of his forearm.

“You remember that thing about stoplights?” Jordi asked, apparently unmoved by Aiden’s attempts to get his head free. His hand was still moving on Aiden’s cock, stroking him lazily in distinct counterpoint to the harsh grip on his hair.

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” He couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice, trying to pull his head away and failing. Jordi yanked his head back harder in return, his teeth sinking into Aiden’s neck again. It startled a swear out of him before Aiden started working in earnest to fight his way free.

The tightening grip on his cock made him reconsider, muscles tense as his thoughts started racing. Jordi was like a cat—he played with his food before killing it. But he hadn’t given Aiden any indication that he was following through on that contract, and if he’d killed him while he was still tied up it would have been easier. What was he getting out of this? If Aiden didn’t figure it out, and figure it out _fast_ , he’d be dead.

And he _still_ had no idea why Jordi kept bringing up stoplights. Was it supposed to be a code for something?

“You ever heard of BDSM?” Jordi’s voice was low in his ear, the rough edge of his beard rubbing up against Aiden’s jaw. With his head pulled back like this, Aiden was forced to arch back against him, ass pressed into the curve of Jordi’s body. It was an uncomfortable position to be in with a question like that.

“You’re shitting me. Jordi, if this is a kink thing, why not just _say_ that?” His heart was going a mile minute, his fight response bleeding into outrage. For a guy who liked to talk, Jordi was apparently incapable of using his _words_.

“Oh, good, you do know of it. Which is funny, see, because I figured you were just completely ignorant. Surprising, but hey, I’ve heard weirder. Only _now_ , apparently, you actually _do_ know what it is. The fuck, Pearce.” Jordi’s fingers were still tight in his hair, and Aiden couldn’t turn his head to see his face. The tone of his voice was amiable, but that didn’t mean Jordi wasn’t in a violent mood—his face had always been a better indication than his voice.

“Your point?” Aiden tried to twitch his hips away to no avail.

“My _point_ , Pearce, is that for someone who apparently knows what the fuck is up, you’re a goddamn _idiot_. You’re just going to let me do this without what, negotiating? Knowing what the hell your safeword actually is?” The fingers in his hair yanked again as Jordi hooked a leg over Aiden’s calf, forcing him to arch even further. Jordi’s cock was a hard line against the cleft of his ass, as unyielding as the rest of his body.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aiden snapped, reaching for the hand around his own length. Jordi’s fingers tightened, making his breath hitch.

“That’s my fucking point! You don’t know any of the _important_ shit. You’re just going to let me do this?” Jordi’s thumb ran over his head again, pressing into Aiden and forcing a soft noise out of him. “Jesus christ, Pearce. Do you even know your own limits?”

“Fuck _off_ , I’m not letting you do _anything_ ,” he said, voice strained as he pushed himself back against Jordi. The fact that his body was still reacting like this was something he wanted infuriated him. The fact that _Jordi_ thought this was something he wanted? That was something Aiden was going to correct.

“Oh? You aren’t?” Jordi’s fingers tightened painfully, then abruptly they were gone as he rolled away. Aiden was too stunned to take advantage of the sudden freedom, frozen in place before rolling over as well and sitting up.

The look Jordi was giving him was calculating and critical in equal measures, his head propped on his arms and his legs crossed at the ankles. He looked, absurdly, like he’d just been relaxing in the bed this whole time, rather than pinning Aiden and threatening him. Because he _had_ been threatening him… hadn’t he?

Aiden felt off-balance. Wrong. Like he’d stepped on what was supposed to be solid ground only to have it crumble out from underneath him. It didn’t help that he was still hard, and the sudden loss of Jordi’s body heat left him cold and wanting. Which was stupid, because he hadn’t really been interested in the first place—except, he had been, before Jordi had pulled the rug out from under him. And started insulting him.

For a few painful seconds, Aiden wanted a cigarette more than he’d wanted anything in his life. But before he could get up and start dressing to go outside and smoke, Jordi spoke up.

“The thing I don’t get, Pearce, is you’ve done this before. I _watched_ you go under like you were born for it, and I know you’re not a fucking virgin. No, don’t open your mouth, I’ve got shit to say. I just want to know how you managed to stumble into the scene and not learn a single goddamn thing about protecting yourself. If anyone could do it, it’d be you, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t even possible.”

It was like they were speaking two entirely different languages—not an uncommon feeling with Jordi, because the man jumped from slang to metaphor to alarming literalism all too often. The thing was, Jordi kept acting like _he_ was in the wrong for not getting it, like Aiden should’ve understood him from the beginning. Not his usual bullshitting, where Aiden not getting it was half the joke, but almost disappointed.

There was something deeply uncomfortable about the idea of Jordi disappointed in him. The man was an asshole, but he was also brutally honest about his abilities and the abilities of others. Not like Damien, who would needle at him if Aiden didn’t do what he’d wanted—Jordi would laugh in your face, but he’d never pretend like you weren’t good at what you did. If Jordi said you fucked up, nine times out of ten, you’d fucked up.

Aiden wasn’t sure how, but he’d fucked up.

“I still don’t get where the stoplights come in,” he said lamely, for lack of anything better to say. The rage had fizzled out, Jordi no longer giving him anything to fight against, and it left behind

the hollow emptiness that Aiden usually filled with the work he did. But getting up and pulling out his laptop felt _wrong_ somehow, like he’d just be confirming whatever terrible conclusion Jordi had come to. Aiden was nothing if not stubborn, and he wasn’t about to let Jordi win… whatever he was winning here. He wasn’t going to run. He wasn’t going to _hide_.

Jordi was still watching his face, eyes narrowed with something more like thoughtfulness than judgement. It was odd, how expressive his face was; Jordi talked with his hands, sure, but Aiden had always found that his eyes told the truth of it. You could see when Jordi decided you weren’t worth the effort of keeping alive by his eyes alone—it was one of the ways he’d known the man was serious on the lighthouse. Now, though, now there was something different there, an expression Aiden hadn’t seen before.

“C’mere,” said Jordi, instead of explaining the _fucking stoplights_. He patted his stomach, cock still dark and swollen, then lifted an eyebrow. A command, not a request.

Aiden, for lack of anything better to do in the situation, went. He carefully straddled Jordi’s waist, not quite sitting back on his dick but uncomfortably aware of where it pressed against his ass. With the BDSM comment, he was pretty sure that the command had been on _purpose_ too—it seemed like something Jordi would do. Hell, it _was_ something Damien had done sometimes, springing it on him like Aiden would be grateful for the surprise.

Against Jordi’s unmarked skin, the bruising on his thighs looked even nastier, red marks raked along the sides and the stitching along his thigh dark with pooled blood. His shoulders and neck had to be a horror show; Aiden made a mental note to avoid mirrors and wear high-necked shirts as much as possible, the swampy heat be damned. He’d stand out more with Jordi’s marks than he ever would for wearing a turtleneck in the summer.

The soft touch of hands on his thighs derailed his cataloguing of hurts, Jordi’s fingers gentler than Aiden could remember them feeling in the entire time he’d known the man. He glanced up at Jordi’s face again, giving him a thoughtful frown of his own. Odd behavior from Jordi. He wished he could tell what the other man was thinking.

“So, what have you done? Some handcuffs, got spanked once, casual CBT, what?” Jordi’s conversational tones were fucking unnerving with his face that inscrutable. “Nipple clamps? Please tell me there were nipple clamps involved.”

“Are you seriously asking about my entire sexual history? Is that what we’re doing now?” Aiden couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“Shut the fuck up, Pearce. Well, no, actually, _answer my question_. The kink shit, you know. The bondage. You’ve done it before, tell me about it.” He rolled his eyes, the first utterly _Jordi_ emotion Aiden had seen since he’d woken up. It was comforting, in a weird way.

The questions, not as much. It wasn’t just that he was embarrassed, though that played a sizable role in his hesitation. It was that Damien was so utterly tied up in Lena’s accident, in Clara’s death, in Nicky’s kidnapping and the way she’d left with Jacks, so tied in the shitshow Aiden had made of his life that he _couldn’t_ think about it. If he’d left sooner, maybe none of it would have happened. If he’d never left at all, maybe Iraq wouldn’t have hired Maurice. If he’d never met Damien, none of it would have happened; if he’d never left Damien, maybe they would have found answers sooner.

Maybe Aiden would have had something to fill the empty void where his heart should be.

But he _had_ left, if not soon enough, and he’d shot Damien on a lighthouse in November, twice in the heart and once in the head. It had been the right choice. Damien would have killed him. Had _tried_ to kill him, and Nicky, and Jacks, and T-Bone. Had succeeded with Lena and Clara. Had almost succeeded with him. Damien had to die.

But Aiden couldn’t think of that without thinking about the way they’d fallen into each other after a successful heist, the way Damien laughed once he was halfway through a bottle of champagne, the way he’d always seemed to know what Aiden was thinking and used it—to make him feel wonderful or awful, it hadn’t mattered at the time. They had been good together. It was just that they hadn’t been good _for_ each other.

“Tell me about it,” Jordi said again, dark eyes intent.

“Uh, bondage.” Aiden cleared his throat, trying to pull the hurt out of the memories and focus on the mechanics of them. It almost worked. “You know, collars, harnesses, cock cages. Not often, but Damien had a _thing_ about them.”

“Cock cages? Really? That’s racy, didn’t expect it out of you.” Jordi grinned, wide and a little nasty, and it was comforting enough that Aiden let some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. He’d been holding himself braced like he was about to take a punch and needed to roll with it, which was absurd. From this angle, Jordi wouldn’t punch his _face_.

“Fuck you. He did gags a lot, blindfolds… you know, bondage. Pretty basic stuff. Rough sex sometimes, though he liked me topping. He tried the whole whipping thing and I nearly broke his arm, so we never really did it again.”

“Why’d you try and break his arm? Why not just tell him to stop?” The grin was gone, and Aiden could feel his muscles trying to tense again. He refused to let them.

“Because it wouldn’t have worked? Isn’t that the whole _point_ of it, that you don’t get to say no?” Aiden said with an irritable shrug, trying to shake off the feeling that he was stepping wrong again. If Jordi would just stop _looking_ at him like that, he might even succeed at it.

From the way Jordi sucked air through his teeth, Aiden was pretty sure he’d fucked up again.

“No, don’t look at me like that. Don’t open your mouth either. What the _fuck_ did I just say, Aiden? Jesus, you’re a mess. Seriously, shut your mouth and listen, because I’m about to change everything you’ve ever known with five words.”

Mulishly, Aiden shut his mouth. Jordi never used his first name, which meant this was probably important. He wasn’t going to _like_ it, but it was probably important. Jordi was watching his face intently, and nodded once when it seemed he’d decided to get on with it.

“Are you listening?” Jordi’s hand slid up over the curve of his hipbone, palm running up the scar on Aiden’s side. “Here it is: _you’re allowed to say no_. That’s what a fucking safeword _is_ , you moron. The whole _point_ of it is that you _do_ get to say no—you get to tell me to go fuck myself ten ways to Sunday if you really want, all you have to do is safeword out. Your dom isn’t supposed to just fucking do whatever until you try and snap him in two for it.”

He stared. Jordi didn’t seem to be bullshitting for once, which was wrong somehow. This whole conversation was wrong somehow, Aiden straddling Jordi like they were boyfriends or something equally asinine, Jordi telling him that he was supposed to—What? What was he supposed to do? Go back in time and tell Damien that he wasn’t interested?

It would have been a lie then. It would be a lie now. As much as he hated all the things Damien had made him into, Aiden couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t wanted most of them. Damien had said there were two people responsible for Lena’s death up on that lighthouse, and he’d been _right_.

“Fine. So I can say ‘no’. What does that have to do with stoplights?” He let himself fall into the old habits of conversation with Jordi, exasperation and annoyance in equal measures. Easier than thinking about anything else, especially Damien. Especially the things he’d wanted from him, and the things he wanted now.

“It’s a safeword. Or a system of checkins, whatever. Green means go, yellow means hold up, red means stop? Actually, now that I think about it, you’ve never paid attention to a stoplight in your life, no wonder you didn’t get it. I fucking hate straight safewords though, nearly impossible to remember and everyone wants to use shit like ‘banana’ as if they’ll actually remember what that means. You don’t do ravishment, do you? We’ll just stick with ‘stop’ then, because _you_ can’t be trusted with ‘banana’.”

Aiden didn’t even have to pretend confusion for this, because he was utterly lost. Jordi had jumped languages on him again, and the look of mild irritation on his face meant he _knew_ Aiden wasn’t keeping up. But if Jordi already thought he was an idiot, that meant Aiden could ask all the stupid questions he wanted.

“What’s a safeword?” That was something he could ask a concrete question about, something Jordi had mentioned before too. If he had to drag explanations out of the man one word at a time, Aiden _would_.

“I’m not sure who’s more useless, you or the fuck that taught you. At least he’s dead.” Jordi made an abrupt, dismissive gesture, then returned his hands to Aiden’s stomach, digging the palms of his hands into the muscles there like he could ease the tension with that alone. “Safewords are the shit you say when can’t say ‘stop’. You know, ravishment, rapeplay, that sort of shit. ‘No’ and ‘stop’ are part of the fantasy, so you pick something else. Or maybe you’re the kind of person who gets all weird about saying ‘no’, so instead you say ‘candelabra’ when things are getting too heavy for you. Or maybe you just want to say ‘nah, I’m not into the whole piss thing today’ without being _harsh_ , so you tell your guy ‘pumpernickel’ and he _gets_ it. Are you picking up what I’m putting down?”

“It’s a way to say no when you don’t want to say ‘no’,” Aiden said after a moment, resting his own hands over Jordi’s. “But _you_ said, let me think, ‘I can’t be trusted with banana’. Seriously, Jordi?”

“Well, you _can’t_. We’re going to do a little experiment, right, where I’m going to do things to you, and you’re going to tell me to stop, and I’ll stop! It’ll be fun.”

“You’re going to have to explain the ‘fun’ part to me.”

“The fun part is when you tell me to stop, I’ll listen. Won’t even complain. You get to learn what a _boundary_ is, Aiden, aren’t you excited?” Jordi’s hands slid lower, kneading at his hips now. Aiden let his hands follow after, his thumbs pressed against the bone at Jordi’s wrists.

“I know what a goddamn boundary is. I’m not a _child_ , Jordi.” His grip tightened, keeping Jordi from moving his hands any further. He wasn’t about to let himself be mocked like this.

“Oh, you don’t like that? Well that’s a fucking shame, because you _are_ actually. You’re a goddamn baby when it comes to this shit—”

“ _Stop_.” Aiden snapped the word out, not expecting it to do anything. But Jordi stopped talking almost immediately, rubbing his thumbs against Aiden’s skin in small, soothing circles. He… stopped.

It was ridiculous to be so surprised by that, Aiden knew, but he hadn’t _expected_ it. Jordi would go on for ages, especially once he was on a tear, and he’d _really_ been on a tear here. But now he was looking up at Aiden with thoughtful eyes, that odd expression back on his face. Whatever mood Jordi was in, Aiden was beginning to resent it—he wanted things to be _normal_ again. Not this strange, uncomfortable spot where Jordi’s jokes were both too sharp and not sharp enough. Jordi giving a shit about his _feelings_ was about as unbelievable as Santa Claus.

His fingers dug into Jordi’s wrists, then loosened as Aiden forced himself to relax. Getting angry might make him feel better, but it wouldn’t help whatever _this_ was. He sighed, then said, “Just… What is it you’re wanting here, Jordi? You’ve got some kind of game plan. If all you wanted was sex, you could just _ask_.”

Jordi’s fingers tapped against his hips, then stilled. His eyes narrowed, and Aiden tensed up, wondering if this was the moment things flipped. The shift was slow, Jordi sitting up as he kept his grip firm and Aiden in his lap, until they were face to face. If it had been an attempt to impress him, it worked—Aiden could admire the way Jordi’s muscles moved under his skin, even if he couldn’t trust anything the man was about to do.

“What I _want_ is sex that I can trust you with.” Jordi’s voice was low, his lips less than an inch from Aiden’s own. “If I fuck you, I want you there because you’re _enjoying_ it. I want you to beg for it, to choke on my cock, to take everything I give you and _want_ it. And right now, I’m trying to figure out if I can trust you at _all_.”

It was hard to pay attention with Jordi’s face so close, but Aiden’s brow furrowed anyways. That didn’t sound right, that _Jordi_ had anything to worry about when he was the one who’d been jumped and caught off guard. But he couldn’t deny that the fantasy Jordi painted was tempting. Too tempting. Down that road lay only trouble but… Aiden _wanted_ , and he was selfish enough to let himself take it.

“You can trust me,” he said, breathing the words against Jordi’s lips. His hips twitched, hands sliding up the firm muscle on Jordi’s forearms, and when Jordi didn’t pull away immediately, Aiden kissed him.

This time, Jordi kissed back, lazy and slow as his hands shifted to Aiden’s ass. Jordi’s beard scraped against his own stubble, rough counterpoint to the softness of his lips, and Aiden made a soft noise as he wrapped his arms around Jordi’s neck. There was something deeply appealing about kissing a man who could actually match him in a fight—it didn’t happen often, and Aiden’s body remembered the things Jordi had done to him only a few hours earlier. This time, _Aiden_ wanted to remember it too.

Jordi groaned softly into the kiss, dragging his nails up Aiden’s back. His hair was soft under Aiden’s fingers, and he gasped at the sharp points of pain that Jordi’s nails left behind. He rolled his hips, rocking back against the erection still pressing into him, then gasped again when Jordi hauled him close and fell backwards again. With a quick roll, Aiden was underneath him, fingers still tangled in Jordi’s hair and one of his legs hooking over Jordi’s thigh.

He slid one hand down Jordi’s back, tracing the line of muscles there before digging his nails in. Jordi responded instantly, biting into his mouth and rolling his hips down, grinding their cocks together as he hauled Aiden’s ass up higher. Aiden moaned, relishing the sharp pain that fizzled into pleasure, then made a soft noise of frustration when Jordi pulled away.

“Not again, Jordi—”

“Relax, I’m just getting a condom.” Jordi grinned and gave Aiden’s thigh a quick slap before rolling off the bed and grabbing everything they’d used last night. As he climbed back on, he made a gesture for Aiden to roll over, repeating it more emphatically when he wasn’t fast enough to comply.

With a huff, he did, shifting onto his knees and elbows with his ass in the air. It tugged at his stitches a little, but the discomfort barely registered against the rest of his aches. The burning heat of embarrassment was a little more pressing—this was the most vulnerable he’d ever felt, naked and unable to watch Jordi easily. He was caught between trying to turn his head and watch and the urge to just hide his face and let things happen as they would.

The firm pressure of a lubed up finger decided him, sending his face into the mattress as he grabbed at the sheets. It fucked him slowly at first, then pulled out long enough for a second to be added—Jordi was moving faster this time, not that Aiden was complaining. His legs spread wider, a low moan breaking free as he rocked back into Jordi’s hand.

“You know Pearce, it’s a real shame that no one else gets to see you like this,” Jordi said as he pushed a third finger in, fucking him slowly. It was probably for the best that Aiden couldn’t see his face; the smug, hungry tones were enough to do him in, and he remembered the way Jordi had looked at him.

It felt like he was trapped for ages like that, even though Aiden knew it couldn’t have been for longer than a few minutes. Without an idea of what Jordi was going to do next or any indication of how long had passed, all he could go on was the steady build of pleasure and the way his cock throbbed with each thrust of Jordi’s fingers. It was hell, but a different kind of hell from the last time—he _could_ reach back and touch himself. Could jerk himself off, hard and fast, no matter Jordi’s feeling on the matter. All he’d have to do was work the nerve up to do it.

Instead, Aiden’s fingers tightened in the sheets, a soft noise escaping him as Jordi pushed his fingers deep before removing them entirely.

He didn’t make a sound as Jordi pushed in again, the thick head of his cock spreading Aiden open all over again. He was too focused on breathing and the way this was highlighting just how much he was at Jordi’s mercy. The sharp bite of nails on his hips yanked him back into the moment, making Aiden gasp as he rocked back onto the length already half inside him again.

“I wonder how far I could push you before you broke.” Jordi’s voice was thoughtful as his hands slid up Aiden’s back, palms digging into the firm muscles there. His nails left marks down Aiden’s sides as he dragged them back up again, rolling his hips with the movement so that Aiden wasn’t sure if he wanted to push back onto Jordi’s cock or forward into Jordi’s hands.

“Maybe we can test that some _other_ time,” he said, voice muffled by the mattress as he mashed his face into it. It earned him a sharp smack on the ass, a point of pain that was followed by a faint ripple of unease. His skin prickled with goosebumps as Aiden shivered, clenching around Jordi and getting a soft groan in return.

When Jordi didn’t spank him again and just went back to lazily clawing up his sides and back, Aiden let himself relax into the slow thrusts. His arms shifted, giving him better leverage to push back against Jordi and drop into the pleasure of being fucked like he was _worth_ something. Jordi’s hands were firm on his hips now, holding Aiden steady as he drove himself deeper, and Aiden let go, letting himself float.

He was dangerously close to coming, each thrust driving him closer to the edge, his fingers clutching at the sheets desperately. Everything was at that hazy edge of not quite enough and not quite too much, his skin oversensitive and starving for touch simultaneously. Aiden had stopped paying attention to the noises he was making long ago, too caught up in the way Jordi made him feel to be embarrassed by how he reacted to it.

It meant that the next smack came as a doubly unpleasant surprise, sudden and unexpected on the opposite cheek from last time. Aiden’s breath hitched on a moan, his eyes snapping open as his fists clenched. This time, Jordi didn’t let up—the flat of his hand came down hard, upsetting Aiden’s rhythm entirely as he scrambled to get his wits together. That warm floating feeling was gone, replaced by a crueler sort of pleasure as Jordi’s thrusts came harder and faster.

With the fourth smack, Aiden slammed a hand into the headboard, pushing back into Jordi’s thrusts as he hunted for his balance. If he could just—he needed to ride it out, and he knew he _could_ , it was just a matter of removing himself from the equation entirely. It’s just that when Jordi’s hand came down, _again_ , it ripped him right out of everything he was doing, sending him reeling as he tried to find his center.

He broke on the sixth, voice cracking as his nails scraped over the laminate wood of the headboard. “Jordi— _Stop_.”

Jordi stopped, cock still buried deep inside of his and his hands resting gentle over the red marks they’d left. Aiden’s chest heaved as he hunted for a measure of that easy slide into pleasure from earlier, but it was nowhere to be found. His brain was screaming at him to break free and run; failing that, he needed to _fight back_ , take down whoever thought they were man enough to beat _him_ down. He wasn’t going to crumple under the pressure of run-of-the-mill beating—you got them all the time in the business, even after you freelanced. Guys who wanted to be sure you wouldn’t talk, if the money wasn’t good enough. Bosses who wanted to be sure you were loyal. Aiden hadn’t ever broken before, and he wasn’t about to break now, not for something as simple as this.

“So no hitting at all, then,” Jordi said, his hands gentle as he ran them up Aiden’s back. His thumbs pressed a little more firmly into the tense muscles there, but didn’t force too much. He was being _nice_ , if Jordi could be nice at all.

Jordi, not some nameless goon with a bat and grudge. Aiden took a deep breath, forcing himself to hold it before letting it go. He was having sex with Jordi, not in some basement getting a lesson about being a smart-mouthed kid in too deep over his head. It wasn’t anything to be afraid of. He was fine.

His hands were shaking fit to break, and Aiden had bitten straight through his lower lip, but he was fine.

“No hitting at all,” he said after a minute of regulating his breathing. His voice was low and hoarse, but it didn’t shake. At least he had that much. Not that he thought it fooled the man on top of him, especially not when Jordi was draping himself across Aiden’s back like a goddamn cat, but it made _him_ feel a little better about it.

“Rough night for you, huh?” Jordi’s voice was soft in his ear, hands sliding down and around to Aiden’s stomach. It made him grunt and shift a little, abruptly aware that Jordi was still hard inside of him—did the man _ever_ lose an erection? He ought to see a doctor about that, probably.

Aiden considered saying it to him and had to bite down on the words. Jordi didn’t miss that, but his lips were busy trailing over Aiden’s jaw and neck, so he didn’t say anything either. That was a pretty rare occasion. Aiden would be lying if he said he wasn’t grateful.

“Yeah, it’s been a rough night.” He didn’t want to talk about this. Rocking back into Jordi didn’t get him anything though, the man stubbornly still as his hands continued to pet and stroke all over Aiden’s front. “You, uh, planning on doing anything back there anytime soon?”

“Are you up for it?” Jordi sounded interested, his lips against Aiden’s earlobe. A shiver ran through him, and Aiden knew Jordi had felt _that_ too, because he could feel the way Jordi smiled against his jaw.

“I’m up for it. Can we just... _have sex_ , like normal people?” Aiden hoped that didn’t come out half as whiny as he _felt_ like it did. “No tricks, no games, just _sex_?”

Jordi laughed, one of those low snickers that Aiden felt more than heard, then pushed himself up and away. Aiden shifted as well, pressing his face into one arm as the other reached back for one of Jordi’s hands. He was getting off one way or another tonight, _without_ the games Jordi was playing, and if the man wasn’t going to cooperate, then Aiden could take care of it himself.

“That’s bold of you,” Jordi said, beginning to move again. Despite his words, he didn’t do anything to stop Aiden—instead, he moved his hand lower, wrapping his fingers around Aiden’s flagging length and jerking him back to full hardness. Aiden kept his fingers curled around Jordi’s wrist, focusing on the immediate pleasure there instead of anything else. It wasn’t like the freefall from earlier, but maybe that was for the best.

He came not long after, biting back a groan as Jordi’s thrusts grew erratic and then stopped entirely. Jordi hauled him back down into the bed, tugging Aiden close as he pulled out. When he moved to toss the used condom across the room, Aiden muttered, “Just get up and throw it away, I don’t want to try and clean your goddamn semen off the wall.”

That got him another of Jordi’s laughs, but at least he got up and threw it away _properly_. It gave Aiden a chance to actually get comfortable too, reaching for his phone as he tried to wind his brain down again. This wasn’t the blissful slide into sleep he’d gotten before, but Aiden hadn’t really expected that, despite whatever naive bit of him had hoped for it. Getting even a couple hours was more than he usually did these days, there was no point in being selfish.

And if he was mad because he _might_ have gotten that before Jordi pulled his bullshit from earlier, well. No point in crying over spilled milk either.

Jordi pressed into his back the moment he returned, draping an arm over Aiden’s side and a leg over his thighs. He dragged the covers up over them both too, muttering under his breath about the sheet being uneven before finally getting comfortable and going still. His skin was warm against Aiden’s own, chest hair just as bizarrely soft as regular hair, and his hand rested just above Aiden’s stomach, fingers splayed wide over his diaphragm.

“Get some sleep,” Aiden said, a little redundantly. That was obviously what Jordi was doing. It made him smile anyways, the curve of his lips shaping a smirk against Aiden’s shoulder. Asshole.

“Wake me up around dawn. We’ve got planning to do.”


	5. break_

**August 23rd, 2016, 07:32**

 

He’d let Jordi sleep in about half an hour after the first hints of light crept in under the heavy hotel curtains, but not any longer. A firm elbow to Jordi’s ribs was enough to get the other fixer up—Aiden could probably have been nicer about it, he knew Jordi slept as lightly as _he_ did these days, but Jordi’s chin had been digging into one of the bruises on his shoulders and Aiden had felt justified in wanting a little revenge.

Hotel coffee was better than gas station coffee, but not by much. Aiden fussed over the stupid one-cup machine while Jordi showered, then booted up his laptop and checked over the cameras in Schmidt’s house. He’d been informed of Aiden’s escape after dinner, apparently, if the tantrum the man threw in his office was any indication. Four phone calls, some shuffling of papers, and then he was back to the calm slimeball he’d always been.

If he’d been watching the feed at the time, Aiden would have been able to listen in on those calls; as it was, he got Schmidt’s half of it. Some kind of meeting at one of the waterfront properties Aiden had written off—too many warehouses, not enough time to go through and check every single one of them. How nice of Schmidt to draw a big red target on this one.

He was in the process of changing the frequencies his facial-recognition scrambler worked at when a damp towel hit the back of his head. With a grunt of annoyance, Aiden sat back and pulled the towel off, turning to glare at Jordi. He’d shaved and trimmed up his beard, and Aiden was abruptly aware of the fact that he hadn’t even bothered the last time he’d showered. Probably something he should do, especially if he was hoping to blend in.

“Your guns in your bag?” Jordi asked before Aiden could say anything, catching him off guard. He blinked, then cleared his throat and nodded, pushing himself up and out of the chair with a wince—probably ought to do something about his leg, but the pain wasn’t too horrible, and he just needed to remember not to push it.

“Clean them while I shower?” Aiden waited long enough to get an affirmative, dismissive gesture, then headed into the bathroom. The mirror was still fogged up, which was a small blessing, but Jordi had left his razor out for him. He wasn’t sure if that was a courtesy or another jab at his hygiene; it was hard to tell with Jordi. For now, he’d assume goodwill, but it was probably the latter.

When he stepped into the shower proper, Aiden discovered that Jordi didn’t just like nice suits and nice hotels—apparently, he was the kind of person to bring his own nice shower supplies from home too. It took some investigation before he figured out which bottles were meant for which body parts because all of them looked the same, absurdly bright soaps with pitch black labels. For a moment he thought longingly of the bar of soap at the bottom of _his_ bag, but it wasn’t worth leaving the bathroom for. At least hotel showers didn’t run cold often, even with a massive load on their water heaters.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood under the hot water, letting it ease away the aches from the night before. His shoulders were tender when he touched them, and there were the remains of bruises and welts all along his hips and thighs. The stitches in his leg were holding, at least, and he made a mental note to dry those _very_ well. Should have covered them in the first place, but it couldn’t be helped now.

God, he was tired. His nap last night hadn’t helped at all.

The mirror was fogged even worse once he stepped out of the shower, so Aiden started drying off in earnest while he waited for it to clear. His stitches got a firm patdown and he checked them over to make sure they weren’t inflamed, but they seemed to be doing alright. Better than he could hope for, really, though Jordi’s medkit was always high-quality stuff. He’d just have to watch himself when he climbed up and down buildings. No point in popping them when going a little slower would keep him going for longer.

Finally, a big enough circle cleared on the mirror for him to get a good look at himself, and Aiden winced. His shoulders were exactly as bad as he’d feared, purpling bruises spread across them with healing red marks where Jordi’s teeth had broken the skin. The bruising extended up his neck too—he’d _definitely_ have to wear his collar up when they went out. Jesus.

Instead of reflecting on it for any longer, Aiden shaved, trying not to think about what he and Jordi had been doing to earn those bruises. It wasn’t likely to happen again. They’d finish the job, he’d wire a payment for Jordi’s help, and then they’d part ways again. If he was lucky, this time without violence. No more time for fooling around.

He rinsed his face off, ran a hand over his smooth jaw, then straightened his shoulders and stepped out of the bathroom. Jordi only glanced up long enough to give him a once over, then jerked his thumb at where Aiden’s bag was shoved against a wall. His pistol was back together, resting on the desk, but it looked like Jordi was still in the process of piecing his ACR back up. Wasn’t a surprise—they’d both been pretty dirty, and Aiden had known it.

“Schmidt’s holding an emergency meeting in one of his warehouses,” Aiden said, pulling on his underwear carefully, then an undershirt. If he was going to be sweating, he might as well make life easier on himself. “Yesterday, I tried to break into his main office and it scared him. Bad. This meeting might be a good second chance for me, get some information on his operations and see who his main guys are.”

“Tried? That’s a new one from you. I’m guessing that’s why you became target number one for every schmuck in Tampa with a car and a gun.” Jordi didn’t sound terribly sympathetic, but that was Jordi for you. He was the kind of guy who’d bring popcorn to an execution.

“Yeah, probably. I need to get into that warehouse—it’s got ctOS access for the exterior cameras, but the interior is leaving me blind. You think you can play backup for me?” It wasn’t a question, really, Aiden _knew_ Jordi could play backup, but it didn’t hurt to be polite. Jordi got offended by the strangest things sometimes.

“You want me at your back or up high? It’s daylight Pearce, I hope you’re not forgetting that. Long lines of sight for the guards.” Jordi snapped the stock into place, gave the ACR a final once over, then nodded. Aiden made a mental note to pick up ammo on the way to the warehouse; there wasn’t a waiting period on that.

“Can’t be helped. The meeting’s at four, a little after his lunch break, and just getting in isn’t enough. I need to be able to hear what his plans are. If this doesn’t give me anything, we’ll hit the office next.” He pulled on his jacket last, rolling his shoulders a little before settling the old leather with a sigh. It was a risk sometimes, wearing this thing, but he’d gotten through enough scrapes with it on to subscribe to a certain kind of superstition. It’s not like Jordi could get on his case for it in his goddamn suits.

The shirt underneath Jordi’s white linen jacket was emerald green. Aiden tried not to read into it.

He cleared his throat and holstered his pistol properly this time, checking over the ACR before buckling it across his back under the concealing folds of his jacket, ignoring the way its strap dug into his bruised shoulder. “At my back, I’m thinking. You’re good with a rifle, but I’m guessing the worst of his guards are going to be inside.”

“You never let me have fun.” The complaint was mild and Jordi was already hunting through his rifle case for a spare handgun. Aiden could see two shoulder holsters through the opening of Jordi’s jacket; not that surprising that he was of the ‘more is better’ school of thought when it came to guns. Considering how many bullets they were going to be using, Aiden figured it wasn’t too wrong.

“I need to pick up ammo on the way. That going to be a problem?” He checked his pockets, just to be sure—two spare clips in his left, cigarettes and wallet in his right. His cellphone was sitting next to the laptop, so Aiden picked it up and checked the feeds one last time before dropping it in his pocket too.

“Nah, I need to pick up some spare magazines. Wasn’t planning on anything big while I was here, sort of a one-two job, went off without a hitch. But hey! _You_ went and showed up, didn’t you?” Jordi grinned. It was unsettling.

“...Yeah.” Aiden narrowed his eyes, then shook his head. “We can scope the place out first, get there a little early and see who arrives. If we can trace their cars, get some bugs in their phones, that’ll give me a better idea of the size of his core organization. Most of the people in this, they’re small fry. We cut off the head— _all_ of the heads—then they’ll drop everything and run.”

“Kinky,” Jordi said, straightening the line of his suit before sliding his wallet into his pocket. “Where do you want to get breakfast? The room service here isn’t worth mentioning, and I’m craving some goddamn waffles.”

“What? Breakfa—Jordi, we’re not getting breakfast.” Aiden’s eyebrows shot up at the suggestion. Like hell was he walking into a restaurant with a rifle strapped to his back, not even in the South.

“Well why the fuck not? I’m hungry, I want waffles, and this shit’s not going down until four in the afternoon, right? So, let’s get us some breakfast. Waffle House, Pancake Palace, some local diner—work with me here, Pearce. Where do you want to get _waffles_? I’m vetoing Danny’s outright.”

“ _Seriously_?” Jordi’s eyes narrowed, and Aiden let out a frustrated sigh. Fine. He wasn’t budging on this. “Alright, Jesus, we’ll get breakfast.”

“Most important meal of the day, Pearce.” Jordi’s smirk was back as he slung an arm over Aiden’s shoulders, steering him towards the door. Aiden made a dismissive noise, glancing back at his laptop before shaking his head. He’d go over the data again after they found out what Schmidt was trying so desperately to hide.

The problem with nice hotels like this one was that he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched the whole time. Motels didn’t pay much attention to someone’s comings and goings, but hotels were crawling with cameras. Employees were always up and moving—the workers who cleaned rooms, the receptionists behind the desk, valets loitering around the front driveway. Dozens of eyes watching him and Jordi come out of the elevators and head towards the parking garage. Dozens of cameras picking up his face and then being scrambled as he passed by, blurring his features out.

Aiden hated the feeling of being watched. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it; this hotel was the safest place for him right now.

He stole the keys from Jordi when they got into the garage, ignoring the look of outrage it earned him. Like hell was he about to let someone else drive. Last night had been a fluke, not the norm.

“You never gave me an answer, you know,” Jordi complained, settling into the passenger’s seat before fiddling with the GPS on the car. Since it didn’t look like Jordi was _interested_ in an answer, Aiden didn’t give him one, tugging his gun into a more comfortable position before starting the car.

He pulled his pack of cigarettes out, tapping them on his thigh as they rolled towards the exit. The offended squawk Jordi made went ignored too as Aiden lit one and rolled the window down just far enough for the smoke to drift out.

“You know, this could be a fucking rental. You’re not allowed to smoke in rentals, and _I’m_ not about to eat the cost of that.” Despite his bitching, Jordi wasn’t making any move to _stop_ him. Aiden took that to mean that he was in the clear.

“It’s not a rental. I’m fine with wherever, you’re the guy who wants waffles. There’s a couple places nearby, but parking’s going to be shit.” He paused at the exit of the parking garage, checking traffic, then pulled out heading towards the highway. There was bound to be _something_ in that direction.

“Ugh, downtown parking. I hate that shit. Let’s do something with a parking lot, I don’t want to be running back to the meter every thirty seconds. Last thing I need is this fucking car towed, it’s harder to get my guy to deliver out here. Shitload of phone calls, apparently.”

“Your life must be so difficult,” Aiden said dryly, merging into the traffic headed towards the highway. Jordi was muttering over the GPS, so he hadn’t come to a decision yet. The soft melody of some recent pop hit rolled underneath Jordi’s voice, and the road was smooth, morning traffic aside.

For a few minutes, Aiden basked in the strange domesticity of it all. The last time he’d hopped in the car to head somewhere for breakfast was… four years ago, maybe. Before Lena had died. They hadn’t done it every week, but they’d tried—him, Nicky, the kids. Her husband, before the divorce, but not as often as he _should_ have shown up. They’d done pancakes more often than not, Lena and Jacks getting these monstrous, mostly chocolate things, but sometimes they’d gone other places. Saturdays, not Sundays, so no church crowd but… Four years. That was a long time to go without family.

Maybe if he hadn’t let his desire for revenge consume him, he’d still have one. But then again, considering Damien, maybe not. It was too late for regrets either way.

“Ha! Waffle house, since _somebody_ can’t make up his mind. Take the highway going west, it shouldn’t be too far away.” Jordi leaned back, his work with the GPS done. Dutifully, Aiden flicked on his blinker and went left, hitting the entrance ramp at a perfectly normal speed this time and taking them towards Jordi’s chosen restaurant.

Close to the mall that Schmidt always ate at too. He wondered if that was intentional; Jordi _had_ been in the parking lot, which meant that he could have been meeting with Schmidt before the scheduled lunch. Maybe this was the first place he could think of. Aiden didn’t really believe in coincidences, but he _did_ believe in Jordi’s ability and desire to just fuck with him for no reason.

The parking lot wasn’t as full as he’d thought it would be in the morning, but maybe this just wasn’t a prime spot for breakfast. Aiden found a spot easily and parked, carefully maneuvering the strap of his ACR off and hiding the damn thing in the back seat. Hopefully no one tried to steal the SUV. Either way, he wasn’t bringing a rifle into Waffle House—there were some lows even he wouldn’t sink to.

“Hurry up, Pearce, I’m starving.” Jordi was already halfway across the parking lot. Aiden rolled his eyes, ashing his cigarette out on the asphalt, then followed after him, locking the car as he did. He fit in more with the diner crowd than Jordi did, and it was almost funny watching the other fixer trying to navigate his way to a table without getting grease stains on his nice white suit. Narcissist.

The waitress left them a carafe of coffee and Aiden contemplated the laminate menu in front of him. It hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been in one of these, same collection of American food staples and the eponymous waffles. He was pretty sure the eggs would kill him, but waffles weren’t a bad idea—if Jordi was going to drag him out for them, then Aiden might as well play along to the fullest.

“So,” Jordi said once they’d ordered, leaning across the table with his hands folded in front of him, “are we talking about last night? Because I want to talk about last night. _And_ you’re a captive audience, so I guess you’re going to have to put up with this.”

“You don’t really let up, do you?” Aiden asked, taking a sip of his coffee. It was a mostly rhetorical question, and Jordi ignored it.

“ _I_ think that you’ve got a problem with authority. Or asserting yourself. Something like that, I’m trying to remember how my guy put it— _anyways_. I think that you need to learn how to verbalize your desires in a productive and healthy environment. You know, without having a panic attack halfway through.”

“If you’re trying to play sex therapist, I’m going to have to tell you to stick with your day job.” Aiden leaned forward as well, if only to keep Jordi from raising his voice. Bad enough that they were having this conversation at all, he _absolutely_ did not want them to have it loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I’m just saying, you’ve got issues. And I’m not _adverse_ to just ignoring the elephant in the room and going on my merry way, but it was fun when we _weren’t_ having to fuck with your issues, so I’m thinking that we handle those and go back to the fun bits. Like adults. With functional coping mechanisms.” Jordi grinned at him, then craned his head to see how the waffles were coming.

Aiden snorted, refilling his mug. No sugar, because he’d lost his taste for it long ago, and this was the best coffee he’d had all week. “I don’t have ‘issues’, Jordi. And I never really pegged you for the whole _compassionate lover_ role. Is this the part where you promise me roses and sweep me off my feet?”

“Go fuck yourself, Aiden.” Jordi leaned back, making room for their food on the table. Aiden leaned back as well a second later, trying to ignore how his name sounded on Jordi’s lips. Last night, it had been part of that weird floating space along with everything else. In the light of day, it just felt uncomfortable.

They ate mostly in silence, Jordi tearing through his stack of waffles like they’d personally offended him. He had to admit, this was better than the fast food he’d been eating for longer than he cared to remember—not by much, it was still a metric ton of sugar and carbs with little else going for it, but it wasn’t _pizza_ again. Or Quinkies. It was both freshly cooked _and_ less likely to clog his arteries in an instant. Aiden would take it, for now.

Jordi pulled out his wallet before Aiden could, then gave him a superior grin like he knew exactly what Aiden was thinking. It wasn’t even like Waffle House was _expensive_ , but somehow this was going to come back and bite him in the ass. He knew it.

He lit another cigarette as they stepped outside, ignoring the noise of disgust Jordi made, and squinted at the sun behind the clouds. The temperature was already nearly in the nineties again, and it wasn’t even ten. Add in the heavy weight of the clouds overhead and it felt like he was _swimming_ through the heat. Waiting around outside was going to be miserable, but he didn’t want to show up to the warehouse late either—knowing who was arriving and _when_ was just as important as the main event. Maybe more so. If there was one thing the auction in Chicago had taught him, it was that the people attending the event were even more fucked up than the person leading it. Schmidt was already a given, but the rest of his organization? Aiden could use that.

“Earth to Pearce, Earth to Pearce, are you even fucking listening?” Aiden blinked, then turned to look at Jordi instead. He hadn’t been, trying to juggle the logistics of skulking in hundred-degree weather in his head. From the look on Jordi’s face, he knew it.

“You’re a dick, you know that? What are we doing while we wait for go time?” Jordi asked again, leaning against the side of his SUV. After a moment, Aiden joined him, taking a long drag before sighing the smoke out.

“Scoping the place out? You know, basic footwork. I thought that was a whole _thing_ you liked—no spontaneous action, figuring out your killing ground before you went for it. Got any better ideas?”

Jordi snorted derisively before waving some of the smoke away. “Ugh, you’re the worst. Yeah, _obviously_ we’re scoping the place out, but that’s not going to take six hours. And if you think I’m sitting outside in the heat for four hours because you don’t know how to time things right, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“And again, Jordi—got any better ideas?” Aiden rolled his eyes and shifted position so the wind wouldn’t blow the smoke into their faces again. He could take a hint.

“We could see a movie. There’s a theater, literally right there. It’s August. There’s bound to be _something_ playing.” Jordi eyed the mall across the road with consideration, like he was weighing it against every other entertainment in the area. At ten in the morning on a weekday, there weren’t many. “Or we could go to a strip club, there’s a few open near here.”

Aiden choked.

“No, really, I’m serious. I’m not sitting around for six fucking hours staring at a goddamn warehouse, even if you promise to blow me or something. I want some air conditioning, and I’m not burning eighty bucks in gas to get it. So pick one: movie or strip club.”

“Jesus, Jordi! We’ll go to the movies if that’s really what you want—what are you, _five_?” Aiden shook his head, taking a final drag before ashing this cigarette too. There were better things they could be doing—checking on Schmidt’s movements, for one—but the theater was bound to be empty for a matinee showing. Aiden could busy himself with the cameras while Jordi watched whatever his heart desired.

“No, because if I was five you’d actually listen to me.” With a faint sneer, Jordi pushed away from the SUV and climbed in instead, impatiently starting the car and buckling in. It was comforting to know that he wasn’t the only one dealing poorly with the heat at least.

It was a quick hop over to the mall to catch a showing of some superhero movie—they came on such a regular interval now that Aiden had stopped keeping track—that Jordi ate popcorn through. They were the only ones in the theatre. Out of courtesy, and a desire to avoid getting bitched out for it, Aiden sat in the back of the theater on his phone, flipping through the cameras in Schmidt’s house.

The office didn’t have ctOS access, and neither did the warehouse. He’d be flying completely blind at the warehouse, without even the aid of the hall cameras he’d had in the office building. Aiden didn’t like flying blind.

There were ways to mark guards moving around, ways to ping every phone in the vicinity and get a marker all of them. It was crude, compared to marking their locations himself, and it wouldn’t work in a populated area, but he could manage it at the warehouse. The problem would be keeping all of those guards on his radar and away from the both of them as they moved through. This wasn’t a situation he wanted to fight his way out of, because anything that spooked Schmidt could cause him to cut and run completely.

He stared at the young woman cleaning the kitchen on the cameras. No data. No name. If Schmidt ran, what would happen to her? His wife would come with him, surely, and both of his children were college aged—this wasn’t a federal investigation, and Aiden didn’t have the clout to do anything more than expose Schmidt and pray if he ran. There wouldn’t be any repercussions. There was only him.

His jaw firmed as he swapped cameras again, focusing on Schmidt’s home office. The man himself was gone, no electronics with wireless connections for him to take advantage of, but the office itself was offensive in how normal it looked. Dark wood furniture. Lawbooks on the shelves. If he’d had a hardline connection, he might have been able to get into the desktop, but someone close to Schmidt knew enough to keep the entire rig removed from ctOS access.

Probably to thwart the FBI, if the FBI had ever shown interest. It worked against him too, for now.

The sudden loss of light made him glance up at the screen, where credits were beginning to roll. Aiden wasn’t sure how long he’d been watching the empty room, but apparently it was a while. Jordi was standing and stretching in the rows below him, white suit brilliant in the darkness of the room. It made his shoulders look broader, even as it hid all the muscles that Aiden knew lay beneath.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss that thought, then stood and made his way down, phone back in his pocket. Jordi’s face was unreadable in the darkness. If he’d enjoyed the movie, he wasn’t showing it, but his popcorn tub was full of garbage and looked mostly empty. Aiden figured he’d hear about it if it was shit.

“We still need to pick up ammo,” he said as they walked out, Jordi tossing the tub into a garbage can without a pause. “There’s a few stores near here, but if we can hit one on the way to the warehouse, that would be simpler.”

“Not likely. There’s a place up north, doesn’t ask too many questions. Maybe fifteen minutes out of our way. You let me go in and buy it, and we’re golden.  We’ve still got time to burn, right?” Jordi wrapped an arm around his shoulders as they went down the escalators, ignoring the annoyed look Aiden gave him.

“Not as much as I’d like. You know the caliber I need?” There wasn’t any _reason_ for Jordi’s arm to be on his shoulders either. Aiden was nearly positive that he was doing it just to bother him, trying to get a rise. He kept his own hands firmly in his pockets. Like hell was he going to give Jordi that much.

“Forty-fives for the pistol and… what, two-twenty-threes for the rifle, right? Pretty sure that’s right, I checked when I was cleaning it,” Jordi said, finally pulling his arm away as they turned to head out to the parking garage. The warmth of it remained on the back of his neck until they stepped outside into the sweltering heat that hit like a punch to the face.

He hated this state. He really did.

“Remingtons, yeah. Hollowpoints if they have them. You don’t trust me in a gun store all by myself?” The SUV flashed its lights as Aiden unlocked it, adjusting his course slightly to climb into the driver’s seat. Jordi barked out a laugh as he climbed in on the other side, but didn’t answer.

That was fine by him. Once Jordi had the address plugged in, he turned the music up and leaned away, looking out the window with a faint grin on his face. Aiden didn’t bother asking—he wouldn’t have gotten a straight answer either way, and he wasn’t going let Jordi know that he was interested. All that would get him was several hours of mockery. Jordi was the type for it.

The drive was shorter than Jordi had estimated, Aiden pulling into the parking lot about ten minutes after leaving the mall. Traffic wasn’t going to be as kind heading south again, but any edge on time he could get, he’d take. The other fixer gave him a mocking salute before heading inside, suit completely at odds with the usual customer in there. Aiden wondered how often he’d been refused service because someone thought he looked out of place—not often, he’d imagine. Jordi had a way of convincing people, and only sometimes did that convincing require judicious applications of violence. He rapped his pack of cigarettes against his thigh, counting mentally—two left. Needed to get another pack soon.

Oh, hell. This was probably going to be attached to whatever nebulous invoice Jordi was planning on sending him. For all that Aiden had approached him last night in an effort to get Jordi on his side, he hadn’t forgotten that the man ran _expensive_. He was good at what he did, better than most, but it meant you had to pay for him. It had been easy enough in Chicago, and he could probably eat the cost now too but… That was going to be a pain. At least Jordi took cash.

“Jesus, you’re an expensive date,” Jordi said a few minutes later as he climbed into the car, tossing the bag full of ammunition in the back seat.

“You know, I could’ve paid for it myself if you’d let me go in there,” Aiden said, pulling back onto the road and turning them south. This one ran almost all the way to where they needed to be, provided he was up to fighting traffic the whole way. Hopefully it would lighten up as they got closer to the military base not far from Schmidt’s warehouse.

“Yeah, but can I trust you not to shoot the place up because someone rear-ended a granny once? No? Then you don’t get to go in the gun store, Pearce. You get to sit outside and hope I bring you a pack of gum if you’re _really_ good for me.”

Aiden barked out a startled laugh, then tried to cover it up by taking a drag on his cigarette. From the way Jordi was grinning at him, he hadn’t exactly succeeded, but Aiden wasn’t going to open that can of worms either. The fewer things they talked about, the fewer verbal pitfalls he could get trapped in.

But he also couldn’t resist getting one last word in himself. “What do I get if I’m really _bad_ for you?”

“You get a—” Jordi paused, looking thoughtful, then narrowed his eyes. “You get a fucking timeout and a lecture. Maybe I’ll make you watch some of that Christian vegan cartoon programming, the kind they use to indoctrinate kids.”

“You’re not a fan of kids shows, are you?” Aiden couldn’t help the smile that wanted to spread on his face, thinking of Jordi sitting in front of a television and trying to watch the sort of cartoons Jacks had loved as a kid. Lena hadn’t been a cartoon sort of girl—she’d wanted to be out and doing things, running in the yard or watching the cars go by on a trip to Pawnee.

“Ugh, no. It’s all blobby animation and chirpy tunes that mean nothing. Like, who even watches those, right? They’re shit. They’re absolute shit.” Jordi snapped his hand out dismissively, apparently unaware of how ridiculous he looked.

“Children watch them, Jordi. That’s why they’re called _kids_ shows.”

“Children have shit taste.” Jordi curled his lip, then turned the music up higher, leaning back in his chair. “So, how many Disney shows do you know all the tunes to? I’m guessing at least four, maybe as many as twenty.”

“Movies, actually. And only six.” Jacks again. Lena had liked her princess movies, but Jacks had been the one watching Lion King over and over again. It hurt to think about, but almost in the same way that setting a broken bone hurt—if he couldn’t remember the good times with them, all he’d ever have left was the crash. Aiden didn’t want to be the man that only had the crash anymore. He wanted to remember Lena as she was, not as she’d died.

“If you sing one now, I won’t even charge you for the ammo,” Jordi said, looking worryingly intent for a couple seconds. It was almost possible that he’d even keep his word, but was it worth it? Not likely.

“You’re going to have to live with the disappointment.” Aiden wasn’t about to rise to that bait, not when he knew exactly where it would lead. He wasn’t the _only_ person who recorded conversations and personal journals, and he didn’t trust Jordi not to have his phone on in his pocket.

“Dickhead.”

The rest of the drive went in relative quiet, Jordi occasionally remarking on the things they passed by. Aiden flicked his butt out the window, since Jordi had tossed his drink with the popcorn, and told himself he’d smoke the last one _after_ he had another pack. Traffic was heavier than usual, but not as bad as he’d expected, and the SUV had the air conditioning to actually combat the sun blazing down on them. He could, begrudgingly, see Jordi’s point about not wasting the gas sitting outside waiting for Schmidt, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that missing the time they had would put them at a disadvantage.

There were already cars in the parking lot of the warehouse, and Aiden pulled the SUV in without any trouble. No one would notice it among the other dark, nondescript vehicles, and they were close enough to one of the entrances that it would serve as a quick escape route. He stepped out of the car, casting a quick glance over the area before opening the door to the backseat, pulling one of the boxes of ammo out and starting to load the spare magazines attached to the strap of the ACR. Jordi was checking his own guns, tossing Aiden the rest of the forty-fives once he was done—Aiden didn’t need them now, both of his spares were full, but he set the box down somewhere easy to access if they got pushed back to the car.

“This is a recon mission. In and out, no one noticing.” He checked the safety on the rifle and his pistol, then cracked his knuckles. Already he could feel his heartbeat picking up, adrenaline rushing through his veins. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t see any action. But Aiden hadn’t been lucky very often, and he wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

“Am I supposed to be up your ass the whole time, or are we splitting up?” Jordi’s guns were hidden away again, the clean lines of his suit masking them easily. He slammed his door shut, coming around the car to stand by Aiden and eyeball the warehouse himself. Just because he _could_ send a personal message didn’t mean that Jordi _did_ very often; he was a smart guy, and Aiden had to admit that killing people from over a hundred yards away was probably the safer bet in their profession. There was an earpiece faintly visible against in his ear, the mic small enough that it could be easily missed. Aiden already had his in, a habit whenever he drove—he couldn’t trust that he’d be able to listen to his phone otherwise, and he needed to keep his hands free during calls.

He considered the question, then shook his head. No point in sticking both of them in the same place, not when he’d need Jordi to keep an escape route clear. “I’ll head in alone, swing around the other side for an entrance. You stay by this exit, give me a clean shot out if I need it.”

“You get to have all the fun,” Jordi said, though the complaint was milder than usual. The idea of sneaking around in a warehouse without air conditioning must not have been very appealing.

“Let’s head in. Looks like some of them are already here, and I don’t want to miss anything.” He waited long enough to get a nod, then started towards the factory, pulling his phone out as he did. One tap, and he suddenly had a visual of every person inside with a phone on them—nearly twenty people total, and this couldn’t be all of them. Definitely not a situation he wanted to gun his way out of.

With a quick hand gesture, he sent Jordi in through the first door, making his way around the warehouse to a different one. The guards on the bottom floor were mostly milling around and shooting the shit—looked like Schmidt let his subordinates hire their own muscle, and that muscle didn’t always play well with others. Sensible to give them time to work any problems out before the main meeting went down.

Aiden waited for the conversation to hit a burst of loud laughter, then moved silently behind one of the many towers of shipping crates in the area. There was an office set high above the cluttered warehouse floor, accessible only via rickety catwalks with stairways at the four corners of the building. He could probably climb up there on one of the stacks of crates, but he’d leave that route open for later—it looked like only three people were in the office now, and none of them were Schmidt.

He had time, then. “Jordi, are you set up?”

“This closet is shit and the people who use these cleaning supplies are probably dead. Hallway’s clear though, all the offices along it are empty. No cameras. Never seen a warehouse without cameras, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.” And Aiden didn’t like that. It meant he was flying half-blind, no way to mark all the people moving around him. Maybe ctOS was a crutch, but it was one that he was loathe to be rid of when it worked so well—most of the time. He needed to figure out who in Schmidt’s entourage had experience with the system—the waterfront office was a coincidence. The warehouse? Schmidt’s home computer? That was a pattern.

“Unlike _somebody_ , I have air conditioning. Shit air conditioning though. You’d think a dump like this might have one redeeming quality.” Jordi sounded offended by the mere existence of the entire place. Aiden, with sweat already running down his spine, couldn’t really blame him.

“I’m getting the feeling that they don’t really care about the people who come here that often. This might be one of the places he loads and unloads the girls. No need to make sure the cargo’s comfortable in that case.” He hauled himself up into a small alcove between shipping containers, the wood crates on the floor serving as an easy step up to the top of the metal container. The way it was angled, no one would be able to see him until they were right on top of him. Good place to wait out the time until Schmidt’s arrival, when he’d want to be up at the office to hear what was said.

“Cheap bastard.” It sounded like Jordi was getting comfortable and settling in too. Waiting was the hardest part of any operation, but at least Aiden had backup for this one. It was more of a relief than he’d thought it would be.

Aiden sighed and leaned back against the shipping container, phone in hand and one ear on the conversation going on behind him. It sounded like another of Schmidt’s lieutenants had arrived—did they always show up before he did? He wished he knew more about the man’s organization, how he operated, what he thought like. That was the problem with hunting down these kinds of scum: Aiden had lived in Chicago for most of his life, had learned the ins and outs of the Club until he could predict them better than he could predict himself. Everywhere else? He was flying blind. It had bitten him in the ass in San Francisco, and he didn’t want it to bite him in the ass now.

In his other ear, Jordi was muttering almost inaudibly, apparently trying and failing to accomplish a challenge in some phone game. A fixer like Jordi used burners more than he did a primary phone—Aiden wondered if he redownloaded the same games over and over again, or if he put new ones on every phone. From the problems he could hear Jordi muttering over, Aiden was thinking the latter.

“You losing?” he said after a moment, voice low. Schmidt’s muscle were arguing over college football—some scandal about a player monetizing his Nudlevideo account. Nothing important yet.

“I’m winning slower than anticipated,” Jordi snapped back, voice equally quiet. Something in Aiden’s chest loosened, the tension in his muscles letting up for a couple seconds. He’d missed this. Jordi wasn’t Damien, not by a long shot, but having someone at his back… he’d missed it. It had been the other reason he’d hired the fixer to find Lena’s killer.

There was a commotion on the floor. Aiden pushed himself back into a crouch, head cocked as he tried to catch what was being said. It seemed the man of the hour had arrived, and was heading upstairs. He checked the clock on his phone, lips thinning—almost a full two hours ahead of schedule. Schmidt was missing his usual lunch for this. If they’d shown up at the time he’d originally planned, they would have missed everything of worth in the meeting.

“Schmidt’s here. I’m heading up, stay alert.” Aiden waited for the sound of feet on the catwalk to fade, then swung himself up to the top of the tower of containers. Below him, the guards were beginning to disperse, having settled on some system of command for now. None of them looked up, too busy making sure all the doors were secure. Perfect.

Silently, he hauled himself up on the catwalk as well, sneaking across until he could press against the wall of the office. Up here he was exposed, but he’d found a spot that was above an area filled with crates—with any luck, no one would look up at the right angle to see him. Better still, the walls were thin enough that he could hear everything the men inside were saying, the metal cold against his side and cheek as he leaned against it.

“Does anyone want to fucking explain why I have this guy following me?” That was Schmidt. Angry, demanding, and secure in his position at the head of this organization.

“Listen, we put extra guys on the office like you asked and they scared him off, didn’t they? He might not even _be_ the guy, the fuck would someone from Chicago be doing down here?” One of his lieutenants. Confirmation that Schmidt had known about him beforehand too—that was concerning.

“He might not be the—who _else_ would he be? Mark, you said one of our fucking buyers got tagged by him outside of Boston, right? Is that when he came down here? Neil? Anyone? I’m not paying you to look pretty!”

“So we just increase security for the next couple shipments, boss. We can handle this, didn’t even lose any of _our_ guys—”

The voices started overlapping as the men inside all rushed to give their opinions. Schmidt had an impressive bellow when he wanted to be heard, which was often. Aiden had wondered how he’d run the organization, and it seemed he’d gotten his answer: with an iron fist, and absolutely no room for errors. Schmidt didn’t just let everyone know what he wanted, he made sure it happened.

If his profit margins had been faltering, he might not have managed it. But Schmidt was smart, and the men underneath him knew it—they could run things the way they saw fit, spend their payouts however they liked, but in the end, _everything_ answered back to Schmidt. And if he didn’t like how you were doing something, you were out.

Aiden had a feeling that ‘out’ meant ‘dead’ most of the time.

Right now, Schmidt didn’t like how _anyone_ wanted to handle the Vigilante. Part of the problem was that most of his lieutenants weren’t on the protection side of things—half of them were transporters, only in town because Schmidt had called an emergency meeting. The other half handled guarding the women while they were in port and making connections with other potential buyers, keeping everyone in line. None of them had ever been in a position to take care of Schmidt or his finances; that had always been the purview of Schmidt alone.

He’d have to try hitting that office again. Right now, Schmidt was more interested in ripping his underlings to shreds, and none of their phones had worthwhile information on them. Still, there was always the chance that he’d let something useful drop in the ranting, with how he—

“Hey! Who is that?”

Shit.

Aiden bolted down the catwalk, swinging himself over the railing on onto one of the large metal containers. The only guard that had spotted him was running back to his fellows, too quick to pick off. Swearing under his breath, he dropped all the way to the floor, bolting across a stretch of empty space in the hopes that he wouldn’t be seen. No luck.

The first two shots ripped past him as Aiden ducked behind a shipping crate, accompanying shouts ringing through the warehouse. Fantastic. If Schmidt hadn’t realized he was still being tracked, he sure would _now_. He wished he could have seen more of that meeting, but there wasn’t anything that could be done for it now—now he had to concentrate on getting out alive.

“Jordi, do I have a clear path?” Aiden kept his voice soft, counting on his earpiece to pick up the words. He was keeping low and moving fast, tracking the movements of Schmidt’s hired muscle by their voices. Twelve guys on the warehouse floor right now. Bad odds. He could manage it, but it wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be fun, especially not when the rest started showing up.

“Jordi?” Not getting a response was a bad sign—it meant that either Jordi was too busy doing something to call in, or that he’d hit a dead zone somewhere. Neither was an attractive prospect, since Aiden needed the backup. A third possibility, that Jordi was dead, wasn’t even worth considering; he’d have heard the guards talking about it, and Jordi wasn’t the kind of guy to let himself be taken down by run of the mill muscle anyways.

He crouched behind a stack of wooden crates, holstering his pistol and pulling his rifle forward. Without the element of surprise, he’d rather have the stopping power of the ACR in front of him. Might make them hesitate. Three coming along the left, the rest spreading out through the warehouse behind and to the right. If he took out these three, then he’d be able to get across the worst of the open space without anyone responding in time.

Aiden waited until the first guard was almost on top of him before launching out of his hiding spot. He slammed the butt of the rifle into the man’s jaw, swinging it back up to fire at the two men behind him. The first went down in an instant, three shots to the center of his chest. The second lasted long enough to get a shot off before toppling back, blood and bone spraying from a hole in his skull.

He swung the rifle down, took out the man underneath him, then started moving again. Those shots weren’t quiet, and Aiden wasn’t going to give the rest of them time to catch up.

With a grunt, he launched himself over another line of crates, landing heavy and nearly falling. A flash of pain sliced up his leg, but he didn’t have time to go gentle on it. Aiden hauled himself back to his feet, limping for a few steps before he managed to power through the pain—he needed to get out. Fast.

A guard came around the corner and died before ever seeing him, Aiden’s gun to his head in a flash. The sound let the others know where he was though, so he swore and changed direction, moving through a shipping container and then climbing a stack of boxes. They were trying to cover the exits, keep him from getting out. He wasn’t about to let them succeed.

“Hey, Pearce, quick question: what the fuck are you doing?” Jordi’s voice was a relief, even if he sounded annoyed. Jordi had gone to the south end of the warehouse when they split up, which meant that unless he’d moved, that was Aiden’s best bet for safety. There’d be fewer guards at least.

“Heading to the south entrance, by you. I’ve got company. Can you get the car started?” He swung himself onto a catwalk, wincing as he landed, then sprinted across it as quickly as he could. Nobody was looking up yet. Perfect. Now all he had to do was _keep_ it that way, and he’d come out of this smelling like daisies.

The office on the other side of the warehouse was empty now; Schmidt had left the building.

“Can I get the—You’re on thin ice here, buddy. Thin fucking ice.” That was probably the best he was going to get out of Jordi. As long as he _did_ get the car started, Aiden couldn’t really bring himself to feel bad about it—at this point, he had much more important things to worry about. He took a secluded staircase two steps at a time, swinging himself over the railing and behind another stack of boxes. For a couple seconds he crouched there, checking his rifle over as he listened for any surprise guards lurking around the half-open door.

He couldn’t hear anything, and he didn’t want to wait too long. Aiden would have to trust that Jordi had taken care of everyone on this side of the warehouse. After checking his rifle over one last time, he moved, kicking the door open and sprinting for the exit down the hall. It was completely empty, and the parking lot was blindingly bright past the door. From behind came a shout, but the time it would take to gun down everyone was time that could be better used to get _out_. He kicked open the second door, bursting out into the open air, then ducked and twisted towards the parking lot as pain exploded through his shoulder.

Swearing through gritted teeth, Aiden kept moving. The car was on, engine running, Jordi halfway out the passenger door with a gun trained on him—past him, on the men still following. He swung himself up into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut with his right hand and reversing out of the parking lot. Jordi continued to fire until Aiden shifted into drive, only then pulling himself back into the car and locking his door.

“Well that was fun. The fuck did you do to your arm?” Aiden didn’t even want to _think_ about the look that was probably on Jordi’s face.  He didn’t really want to answer either, given that this hadn’t been _his_ fault this time, but Jordi would just keep prodding until he did.

“Got shot. Thought it was obvious.” He gritted his teeth as he yanked on the steering wheel, sending them fishtailing for a moment before picking up speed. Schmidt’s men wouldn’t be far behind but if he could get a little distance, they’d never be able to catch up. The problem was, as always, the start of rush hour traffic.

“Yeah, I can see that. Jesus, you’re bleeding everywhere. Pull over, we’re switching off.” Jordi sat up straighter, leaning over the stick shift to try and get a better look at the arm. Aiden tried to lean away, but there was only so far he could go.

“We’re being _chased_ , Jordi, I think I can manage for a couple minutes. It’s fine.” Even if he couldn’t feel his fingers and the pain was radiating up his shoulder and into his neck. It had been a nasty surprise, but Aiden had lived through worse. Could live through worse. Once they were safe, _then_ he could look at his arm and see how bad the damage was.

“Pull over or I grab the wheel and flip us. You’ve got thirty seconds.” Jordi wasn’t smiling. And he had that violent note of surety in his voice—Aiden had always figured him for the kind of guy who’d push someone in front of a train for a quick buck, but apparently, he wasn’t beyond risking himself just to prove a point too.

Aiden weighed his options, then pulled into a Walmart parking lot. At least they’d be able to switch cars, though with his blood all over this one, it wasn’t an option he liked. Jordi climbed out the moment the car stopped, leaving Aiden with a strong urge to lock the doors and drive away. Instead, he popped open his own door, finally looking at the mess he’d made of his arm.

He was lucky, all things considered—his jacket had a sizable hole out of the sleeve now, and blood was soaking down his arm and into the shirt underneath, but it hadn’t hit anything arterial. In fact, it looked like the bullet had barely glanced him, for all that it had taken a chunk out of his bicep. A few inches to the right and he might have been a dead man. Not that it made the pain any nicer or the loss of sensation in his hand any less worrying, but at least he wasn’t likely to bleed out in the next five minutes.

“Jesus christ, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting shot.” Despite the frustration in his voice, Jordi’s hands were surprisingly gentle as he inspected Aiden’s arm. “We need to wrap this. And _you_ need a doctor.”

“No hospitals,” Aiden said automatically, as if that was ever a concern for another fixer.

“What the fuck do you take me for? I’ve got a lady that’s _better_ than hospitals. Come on, let’s get this wrapped and get you to her place, it’s not more than thirty minutes from here. Aren’t you lucky?”

Aiden groaned, but Jordi wasn’t budging, and they needed to leave before the fixers realized that they’d just pulled off for now. So he helped pull the jacket off, hissing in pain as his arm moved—he’d eat his hat if the bone had gotten out intact. The nerve damage was probably the muscles that had been shredded. It was more of a mess underneath the comforting folds of leather, Aiden’s shirt a complete loss. Jordi tore up what remained of his sleeve, pressing a wad of fabric against the hole in Aiden’s bicep. Aiden held it there for him, grunting softly as Jordi wrapped it all tight, then blew out a frustrated sigh when he was pulled out of the driver’s seat.

“I thought I was the best driver you knew,” he complained as he went around to the passenger’s side, hauling his rifle off and tossing it in the back seat along with his jacket. At least he still had his pistol holstered at the small of his back. Small miracles.

“You are. And you’re also an arm down. Shut up and try not to bleed to death,” said Jordi, turning the air conditioning up as he pulled out of the parking lot. A quick check of the relevant radio frequencies gave Aiden nothing—maybe Schmidt’s men had given up sooner than he’d anticipated. Maybe they’d chased someone else down instead.

Either way, it wasn’t his problem anymore. Aiden closed his eyes and tipped his head back, letting the cold air wash over him. Jordi wasn’t talking, and the radio was off, so all he had to accompany him was the dull thudding of his heartbeat in his arm, pain keeping a steady rhythm to the tempo of his thoughts.

It wasn’t soothing. He fell asleep anyways.


	6. surge_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna level with y'all, this chapter was damn near 15k words and I had not even realized until I was going through with this last editing pass. That's ridiculous. So I split it in half, and updated the chapter count to reflect that.

**August ??, 2016 ??:??**

 

For once, waking didn’t come quick. Instead of catapulting out of a nightmare, Aiden floundered in a black fog. His limbs were too heavy to lift, his head stuffed with a dragging blankness that tried to pull him back into the uneasy, dreamless sleep. There was a reason he needed to wake up, something important that he needed to remember. He couldn’t stay down here forever. He needed…

Aiden made a soft noise and swallowed, his throat so dry that he couldn’t get any louder. Everything was faintly red, and after a moment he managed to unstick his eyes enough to open them, the warm light filtering into the room making them water.

It was a soothingly yellow room, a soft muted pastel that caught the light and diffused it before it could get too bright. There were gauzy curtains fluttering by a window, thankfully closed, and an air conditioning vent blowing down on him. All the furniture in the room was white and wicker, soft cushions in various prints, except for the bed he was in—that was a solid, comfortable oak frame with a firm mattress and crisp white sheets. There was an IV line running up into his uninjured arm, a sling around his neck supporting the wounded one, and the faint smell of disinfectant in the air.

Jordi’s doctor. The gunshot. _Schmidt_.

He swallowed again and flexed his hands, trying to work up the willpower to move. The fog in his head was clearing but his limbs were still weighed down with lead, a dull throbbing starting up in his injured arm with the faintest call-and-response in his thigh. The pain was still distant enough that whatever was running in the IV line was still working—he hoped it wasn’t morphine, he didn’t trust himself with opiates—but not for much longer, likely. How long had he been out?

It took more effort than he was happy about to turn his head and look towards the door, but he managed. The rifle was leaning against the frame, his pistol and cellphone resting on the side table with the tactical baton neatly folded in beside them. His cigarettes were notably absent, as were his clothes. He hoped Jordi hadn’t thrown any of those away—he _liked_ that jacket, and the hat had been a gift. Funny how he’d left the guns though. Aiden wasn’t sure they were loaded.

The door, painted a pristine shade of white, swung open as a woman stepped in. Her hair was a vivid blue, tied in dozens of small braids that hung nearly to her waist. Not really the sort of look that Aiden would have expected for a doctor, but he couldn’t judge. The unimpressed look she gave him made him glad he hadn’t said anything; if this was Jordi’s doctor, then she’d probably seen just about everything now. The Vigilante wouldn’t impress her. He was pretty sure Aiden Pearce didn’t impress her either.

She set a glass of water on the side table, then leaned over him to check the dressing on his arm. Aiden watched her warily, then gave her a small grimace as she touched his arm, a faint twinge of pain shooting up into his shoulder. He supposed he was lucky to have even that much.

“I don’t have an x-ray machine here,” she said, voice matter of fact as she stepped around him to check his IV. “You’ve probably cracked the bone, but I can’t be certain. You needed blood and I’ve got you on tramadol right now, but I can’t keep you here forever. You take care of that arm, you might get all the muscle back in the future. _Might_. Try not to get shot again.”

“You get right to the point, don’t you?” Aiden’s voice was hoarse, but at least he could get some sound out. From the look she gave him, the doctor didn’t share his happiness over that fact.

Her movements were brisk as she went about removing the IV, keeping firm pressure on his arm and wrapping it tight once the needle was out. He’d had worse treatment from some of the backalley doctors in Chicago, and it wasn’t like he was in any position to fault her for her bedside manner. At least there wasn’t much blood—he’d pull the bandages off later.

“I haven’t got time to be nice to you. You’re awake now, so I want you both out of my house by tonight. I don’t need the level of shit you’re going to bring down on me, and Jordi knows that.” She nodded once, wiping her hands off, then strode out of the room like she was on a mission. He wondered how they’d met, if Jordi had shown up on her doorstep one night or if she’d hired him for a job. They would certainly make a pair if he ever saw them working in tandem.

The longer he was awake, the easier it became to move. Slowly, carefully, he shifted his hand to the table, picking up the glass of water. His grip felt weak, but the glass was steady as he lifted it to his lips. It was probably the best thing he’d ever tasted, easing the sticky dryness of his throat and eyes. Aiden took it slow, but the glass was empty sooner than he’d expected anyways.

He hated getting shot.

At least it was just the arm this time. The pain was trickling in full force now, but he could flex his fingers still and his movement wasn’t too badly hindered. He’d been caught in the gut before, lucky enough that he hadn’t died to it, but it had put him out of commission for months. With Schmidt on high alert now, Aiden didn’t _have_ months. It had taken him so long to track this man down, a lucky find of a major distributor to the entire east coast, and the cost of losing him now… Unacceptable.

He’d treat the arm as gently as he could, but he couldn’t afford to be down and out for long. Time for Jordi to start pulling his weight as a fixer, because Aiden wouldn’t be able to do it for them both anymore. It wasn’t a fair thought, but he wasn’t inclined to be very fair right now, not with the ache creeping up into his jaw and down to his fingertips.

Even as slow as he was moving, sitting up nearly knocked him back out again. Jordi might end up carrying Aiden more _literally_ if he couldn’t get his strength back soon. He gritted his teeth and pulled his arm out of the sling, ignoring the screaming pain in his shoulder as he tested how badly his hands shook. The rifle was a no-go. He might be stuck watching his phone with that hand, and thank god it wasn’t his dominant one. So he was down to the pistol and the tactical baton, and the baton wasn’t a sure bet either—he could find something to dull the pain, but that wouldn’t give his arm the strength back, and Aiden wasn’t interested in testing his hand-to-hand combat skills in the field.

The door opened again as Aiden let his hands drop, turning to see if the doctor was coming back. But it was Jordi, in a different suit but the same shirt Aiden remembered him wearing, an irritated look on his face. Not that this was news—Aiden was pretty sure he hadn’t seen Jordi smile _once_ since they’d left the movie theater. He certainly hadn’t been happy about Aiden taking a bullet, not from the bits he could remember before blacking out.

“My stuff?” Aiden asked, rolling his good shoulder. From the sour look Jordi was giving his injured arm, he was going to be treating it gently whether he wanted to or not. The man was obsessive about taking care of his weapons, and they were both proof enough that a body could be a weapon too.

“I’ve got your jacket here, and some new clothes from the hotel. Your shirt’s a loss though, so I trashed it.” Jordi tossed the jacket across the end of the bed, then set the new shirt on top of it. Still no cigarettes. There might have only been one left, but Aiden had been _saving_ that one.

“You went back to the hotel but left the guns behind?” Moving slowly, Aiden pulled his legs out from under the sheets, shifting so that he was sitting at the edge of the bed. It was getting easier to stay upright, but staying on his feet? That was going to be another story.

“I didn’t have something to cart them in with. You want me to walk through the lobby of a hotel with an assault rifle in plain sight? Are you shitting me, Pearce?” Jordi grabbed the discarded sling, carefully maneuvering Aiden’s arm into it before slipping the strap over his head. No more freedom for him, apparently.

“So you’re going to make me carry them? _Thanks_ , Jordi.” Aiden huffed as his other arm was firmly pulled into the shirt, Jordi dressing him like he was a goddamn invalid. Even if it was a fair comparison with him one arm down, it still stung; he didn’t like being helpless. Didn’t like being _seen_ as helpless either. The fact that it was Jordi, someone in the business who Aiden _respected_ , even if he didn’t share the man’s pleasure in the job? That was the worst part. He’d been a mess these last couple days and he despised the fact that Jordi was witness to it.

“You’re the one with the shitty mall shooter jacket. If you pull your arm out of that sling again, I’ll break it for _real_ ,” Jordi said as he buttoned the shirt up, looming over Aiden like it was going to impress him. It was a nice view, all things considered. Aiden was pretty sure that wasn’t the thought-process Jordi had wanted to inspire.

He didn’t respond to the threat, either. Jordi had a point—he could hate looking weak all he wanted, but the arm would never heal right if Aiden kept pushing it. If he had to sit back and take the hacking portion of the job, he would, but it grated. It felt wrong, after so long being the one in the line of fire.

At some point, he’d let his eyes slide closed while he thought, some of the heaviness from the drugs still weighing down on him. He’d have to open them when they walked out, but Jordi seemed happy enough to dress him up like an ugly doll, so Aiden let himself drift for a little bit. When was the last time he’d gotten a proper night’s rest?

There was a brief, warm touch to his cheek, the roughness of Jordi’s palm scraping against his stubble, but when Aiden opened his eyes, the man was already turning away to grab the rifle.

Maybe he’d imagined it.

“You want your pistol in the holster too or nah? I’m thinking nah, I’m keeping it. Nightstick… you can have that. And the phone, obviously, I don’t care about that—your dumb hat’s back at the hotel by the way. You left it in the car when I dragged your carcass in here. You know that thing lets people clock you a mile away, right?”

“The jacket does too. I wear different clothes when I’m trying to be sneaky, Jordi.” Aiden helpfully ducked his head for the rifle strap, grunting as it settled on his uninjured shoulder. His jacket was buttoned up with the same speed as his shirt before Jordi dropped to a crouch, putting Aiden’s shoes on with an efficiency that was surprising.

“You’re shit at it then, too. You’ve got this like… miasma of shitty decision making. Just saying.” Jordi straightened, gave Aiden a once over, then handed him his phone, taking the pistol and baton for himself. So much for ‘you can have that’. He didn’t make any move to help Aiden up either, but he was still just close enough to catch him if he fell.

Aiden swayed when he got to his feet but mercifully stayed upright. Little victories. He followed Jordi out to the car, noting all the little touches in the house as they passed through—muted colors and wicker throughout the whole place and a soft, airy feel everywhere. It was probably a nice place to recover if you were the kind of person who couldn’t afford to be found. Too bad for him that he was too dangerous for sanctuaries like it.

Not that he would have been content to lay around anyways. So this was for the best, really.

Automatically, he turned to go to the driver’s side once they were at the car, stopped only by Jordi’s hand on his shoulder steering him the other direction. It was frustrating, but Aiden let himself be redirected, climbing in the passenger’s seat with a grunt. It was a new car, a sedan instead of an SUV this time, tinted windows still firmly present. Not a bad idea, since Schmidt’s men would have gotten a good look at the last car, but something of a pain to sit down into.

His shoulder ached. There were pills in his bag, but Aiden used them to sleep or to keep going, never for things like pain. The amphetamines wouldn’t do him any good now, and the benzos were only an option if the insomnia got bad enough that he started to see things. If the doctor had given Jordi anything for the pain, he’d given no indication. And he still couldn’t smoke in the hotel room.

“This is going to make things harder,” Aiden said as they pulled onto a bigger road, watching the storefronts flash by. He missed the Chicago skyline. There was something comforting about buildings tall enough to eat out bits of the sky, and none of the office buildings in Tampa came close to that.

“No shit? _You’re_ the one that went and got shot. Seriously, I expected better from you. You’re off your game.” Jordi _was_ mad about that. Good to know.

“Yeah, I did it on purpose, Jordi. We got something useful out of it, at least.” Not as much as he would have liked, but it gave him something to aim for when they went back to that office. And they _would_ go back to that office—with Jordi on the sniper rifle picking the guards off from outside, Aiden would have a better chance to get what he needed. Especially if they did it at night. Being down an arm wasn’t going to stop him. He needed Schmidt’s files.

“You’re a jackass. I hope it was worth it, because Indigo is _expensive,_ and you’ve already cost me enough money as it is. Should’ve taken the contract on your ass with how much bullshit you’ve dragged me into.” Jordi’s voice was acidic as he pulled onto the highway, steering them towards the convention center.

“Indigo?” Probably a fake name, but an apt one. Aiden wondered if it had come before the braids or if it was a product of them.

“Pretty much any shade of blue, really. You call her something _other_ than blue, you get kicked out.” Jordi was silent for a few seconds, then said fondly, “I love that woman, I really do. She’s got _style_.”

Aiden snorted, but stayed silent. He knew where her clinic was now—one of them, at least. It wasn’t likely he’d be in this area again, but it was always good to know where the off-the-grid doctors lived. ctOS might tell him more about her, but if she had any clients that felt fondly towards her and knew their way in the system, they would have taken care of that already. Fixers took care of their doctors, because you never wanted to be on the table with them pissed off at you.

He’d pissed off a lot of them, probably. Bad for business. It was a lucky thing that Jordi was friends with this one.

The feeling of being watched ramped up again as they passed through the lobby, but no one was looking at them. There were people in costumes _everywhere_ , clustered so heavily that he and Jordi could barely navigate through them, and the elevator was almost full when they finally got in. He must have been out for longer than he’d thought if there was some kind of convention running now. Was it close to the weekend? It must be.

Days. He’d lost _days_ to this. Aiden’s fists clenched, knuckles going white until he forced himself to relax and breathe.

Jordi’s hand rested heavy on his good shoulder, his body warm and solid at Aiden’s back. Everyone else in the elevator was pressing too close, too loud, chattering about things they wanted to do or see over the weekend; the only bubble of silence was right there between them, Jordi a rock of pissed off serenity. If the proximity of so many giggly kids was grating on _his_ nerves, Jordi must have been miserable.

Their floor came not a second too soon and they exited with relief while someone from the elevator made a joke about James Bond. Jordi’s hand tightened, but he didn’t turn around and kill the kid, so Aiden was going to count that as a victory for both of them. The experience had drained what little of his reserves he had left though, and he was barely staying on his feet when they got back into the hotel room.

“I need to check the cameras for Schmidt’s—”

“You need to lay the fuck down is what you need. Sleep without any goddamn drugs for once, see if your brain turns back on.” Jordi steered him towards the bed, unmoved by Aiden’s attempt to shake him free and head to the desk instead.

“Jordi, I’ve already lost enough time,” Aiden said, giving up. He undid the straps on his jacket, shrugging it off and then grabbing the rifle still slung over his good shoulder. Jordi took it from him before he could more than lift it a couple centimeters, setting it next to his rifle case before tossing the jacket over the back of a chair.

His shirt presented more of a problem—unbuttoning it with only one hand was more of challenge than getting his jacket off, and he was sorely tempted to just sleep with it on. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept in most of his clothes. When you ran the risk of being found at any moment, you got used to jumping into action from a dead sleep; trying to run without shoes or pants wasn’t worth the slight increase in comfort.

While he was still puzzling over his shirt, Jordi headed into the bathroom. He returned a couple seconds later, glass of water in one hand, a couple pills in the other. Aiden watched him set them on the side table, then reached for the pills first. “Are these just Tylenol?”

“Well, I threw a couple Aleve in there too. Not like you’ve got any better options, right?” Jordi was obviously not expecting an answer, so Aiden didn’t bother giving him one. He swallowed the pills dry, then leaned back when Jordi started unbuttoning his shirt. It seemed that he was getting undressed whether he liked it or not.

Once the shirt was off, Jordi started on his shoes as well, tossing them across the room once they were untied. Aiden made a faint noise of reproach, but since Jordi was already unbuttoning his pants as well, he didn’t expect it to have much impact. It was going to be a pain in the ass getting his clothes back on _without_ Jordi; Aiden wasn’t going to think about that yet. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

He put his foot down over his briefs, firmly pushing Jordi’s hands away as he scooted back further onto the bed. If he wasn’t allowed to work on the laptop, he _definitely_ wasn’t about to let Jordi get handsy with him. Sex would be worse for his arm than typing and Aiden wasn’t particularly in the mood for it either way.

With a final sigh, Aiden managed to get settled back against the pillows, tugging the sheet up over his legs with his good hand. Jordi was already up off the floor, brushing his suit off and setting the pistol on the side table by Aiden’s head. His phone was added as almost an afterthought, and Jordi pointedly turned off the lamp once he was done.

“I’ve got some shit to do, make most of the daylight, all that. If I find out you’ve been playing around online instead of sleeping, I’m taking the phone away.” Jordi jabbed him in the chest for emphasis, then walked off without giving Aiden a chance to respond. The thud of the door slamming shut and the lock sliding into place had a very final tone to it.

He laid there in the silence, afternoon light trickling in under the curtains hanging heavy over the window. The hotel was blissfully cold, not like the ratty motel he’d been staying in before everything had gone to shit, and even with the sheet on he felt comfortable. The sharp edge of the pain in his arm was dulled enough that Aiden could focus on everything else instead—the faint whirr of air conditioning, the sound of people moving through the hall and laughing, his pulse heavy in his ears.

Jordi didn’t make idle threats, but that wasn’t what stopped him from grabbing his phone.  He _hadn’t_ gotten a decent night’s rest in a long time, too focused on his goals and too intent on running from his nightmares. He’d gotten close, that first time he’d come here with Jordi, but it hadn’t been enough. It was never enough. Insomnia dogged at his heels while bone-deep exhaustion weighed down on his shoulders.

He was tired. God, was he tired.

At some point, he must have drifted off, because the sound of Jordi opening the door woke him up again. The light was no longer filtering through the curtains and his painkillers had worn off while he was asleep, the ache of his injury creeping back up into his shoulder again with an answering echo in his thigh. He rolled onto his good side with a groan, pushing himself upright as Jordi came in with plastic bags filled with Chinese food, the savory scent of it quickly filling the room.

“Did you get any mongolian beef?” he asked, pushing the sheets off his lap. Before he could swing his legs off the side of the bed, Jordi made an abortive gesture, setting the bags down at the foot of the mattress. Apparently, they were eating right where they were, crumbs in the sheets be damned.

“Got that, lo mein, fried rice, some sweet and sour, some kung pao, and then a metric _shitload_ of eggrolls. We’re talking eggrolls coming out of our eyeballs here, Pearce, we’re going to be fucking drowning in them, we’ll have to start handing them out like candy to the hormonal and sweaty college students in fursuits out there. There’s fursuiters, by the way. I’m keeping an eye on them.”

“Afraid of mascots, Jordi?” Aiden helped him unpack the various foodstuffs—true to his word, there were a _lot_ more eggrolls than expected. He wondered if Jordi had accidentally ordered double the number he’d meant to. No soup though, that was a shame.

“Listen, I knew a guy, swell fellow, but he did all his work in a suit. Especially at crowded conventions like this one. Mostly settled intracommunity disputes apparently, I guess he was really good at tracking someone down by their fursona or whatever, I never asked. But a guy who can pop you from across the room _in a fursuit_? There’s a man to be feared. Can’t see for shit in those things. Don’t ask me how I know that.”

Shaking his head, Aiden grabbed a set of chopsticks and pulled the mongolian beef into his lap. He wasn’t sure how many of Jordi’s stories were real and how many were fake, but there was always the worry that _all_ of them were true. Hard to tell with Jordi. He was the kind of guy who’d tell you the truth until you hanged yourself with it, and that was one of the things that made him dangerous.

Jordi flopped on the bed next to him, digging into one of the chicken dishes instead. He had the remote in hand and had apparently decided that the hotel cable was worth paying for—some sort of medical drama popped up when Jordi turned the television on, the type with too many attractive doctors and not enough connection with reality.  Drivel, mostly, but tolerable for background noise.

They ate in silence, Jordi’s attention wholly on the television and Aiden carefully navigating his food. Without a spare hand to hold the tray steady, he needed to avoid overbalancing it at all costs. It was enough to keep him occupied, and it meant he was eating a little slower than he might usually.

That feeling of domesticity crept up on him again, something almost like nostalgia filtering over the drama playing softly in the background with both of them sprawled across the bed eating. Like the breakfast they’d had days ago, a strangely disconnected moment in time where it was almost like there was nothing else outside this hotel room. No Schmidt, no Chicago, like he could open that door and step into an evening five years ago and tell Nicky he was on his way to pick Jacks up from his after-school club.

It was unsettling, especially with how badly Aiden wanted it. He couldn’t turn back the clock—no one could. Regret was a pointless emotion, useless and weak. All he could do was keep moving forward.

Between the two of them, they made decent inroads on the food, even the eggrolls. Jordi wrapped up the rest of the rice and noodles, shoving it in the little minifridge tucked under the bureau the television sat on. Heating them up would be a different story—this room didn’t have a microwave—but at least fried rice could be eaten cold. And Aiden had managed to avoid getting too much food on the bedsheets around him, which was a definite plus.

“Have I earned the right to my laptop?” he asked dryly, watching Jordi deadbolt the door before coming back and stripping. It was a good view. He hadn’t really appreciated it that first night, not with how focused he’d been on the frustration of having his hands tied, but now Aiden could sit back and trace the muscles on Jordi’s back with his eyes. His own shoulders were broader, but Jordi was built like a wrestler, square with muscle so firm Aiden could probably bounce a quarter off any part of him.

He didn’t realize he was staring until he dragged his gaze up Jordi’s chest and met his eyes, which were dark and glittering with amusement. Aiden’s heart jumped for a second, but he managed to avoid a blush, returning Jordi’s look with a far more challenging one. He might not be up for anything as intense as sex, but that didn’t mean he was going to back down without a fight.

“Mm, you know what? I’m going to say yeah, you’ve earned it.” Jordi flashed him a grin that was a little too mean for comfort, then walked to the desk. It took Aiden a second to remember his original question; he’d been thinking about something else entirely.

He took the laptop readily enough, flipping it open as he shifted back on the bed to lean against the headboard. Navigating the keyboard with one hand was a pain in the ass, but at least he could flick the touchpad with his restrained hand easily enough. No cord, so he’d have to close it down or hand it off to Jordi again once he was done so it didn’t die.

With the ease of long practice, Aiden navigated to where he had the feeds from Schmidt’s house to check on the family and—

Nothing.

“What?” Aiden said, startled enough to vocalize it. He ignored the quizzical look Jordi gave him, looking for another feed, because ctOS was routed through the whole neighborhood and if a control center was down that might explain it but—There were three cars in Schmidt’s driveway. The lights in the living room were on. His neighbors all had their connections wide open.

He checked the feed to Schmidt’s house again, heartbeat thundering in his ears. Maybe it was a mistake. An error in the connection, something from not having refreshed it while he was down and out at the clinic.

Nothing.

Aiden was locked out.

“No, no no no, you can’t be serious,” he breathed, swapping between feeds rapidly as he tried to find some access point into Schmidt’s house. _Everything_ was off the network no, no wireless connection for him to access. His office? Aiden swapped locations entirely, checking the main building Schmidt’s office was in, and found nothing but black. “Shit. _Fuck_.”

“What’s up?” Jordi asked with none of his usual humor, leaning over Aiden’s good shoulder to look at the screen. Even if Jordi wouldn’t understand anything he was doing, Aiden appreciated the second set of eyes; otherwise, he would feel like he was going insane.

“I can’t get access. Schmidt’s house and office building are locked down, no ctOS connections going in _or_ out. This is new. How did he—I need hardline access, I can’t see _anything_ without it. Shit!” Aiden dragged his hand down his face, cupping his jaw with a grip tight enough to bruise. The only explanation was that Schmidt had access to a hacker somewhere—if he’d had a proper security admin before now, he wouldn’t have been so open before. And the warehouse had scared him.

“What’s that mean for us?”

“It means I need to get to Schmidt’s house. _Tonight_. We can’t afford to wait until the morning, because he could be moving everything now.” Aiden gritted his teeth, grip tightening for a couple seconds before he finally pulled his hand away and started typing again. Jordi was a disapproving presence next to him, but at least he didn’t argue—this was Aiden’s wheelhouse, and he was the authority in the room now.

That said, no reason to take stupid risks. Schmidt didn’t have guards on this property, not in the exterior, and if he’d been completely separated from ctOS, Blume would have thrown a fit already. That meant finding the ctOS box on Schmidt’s outer wall, breaking into it, and _then_ using that access—something Aiden was particularly good at. He might not be the best in other areas, but network intrusions were his specialty, and this? This was the one place he _knew_ he was better at than whatever black hat Schmidt had working for him.

Aiden slapped the laptop shut with a twist of his lips, setting it on the side table. He shifted around, swinging his legs off the bed and groaning as he stood up, pain slicing through him when he jostled his arm. Jordi scoffed behind him but got up as well, grabbing his clothes up off the floor. It was more of a struggle to bend over and pick up his own jeans, but at least this time Aiden wasn’t at risk of falling over from the effort.

He’d gotten his legs into the jeans and the whole of them pulled up by the time Jordi had his pants and shirt on, and the fixer stepped over to help him. Jordi was able to do up the fly of Aiden’s pants much faster than he could with one hand, and he tugged one of his own shirts on over Aiden’s injured shoulder, letting the sleeve flap. The shirt was soft, silk probably, easy enough to slide his arm into once Jordi had stepped away.

That was going to be a problem, only having one hand to use. But it wasn’t something that was insurmountable, not with Jordi packing the heat. Aiden didn’t even bother trying to button his shirt up, opting instead to pocket his phone and grab his baton. He wasn’t going to fuss around with a gun either—that wasn’t the purpose of this mission, and if they were going to get in another gunfight, he’d rather _Jordi_ be the walking target this time.

“C’mere so I can button you up,” Jordi said, spinning Aiden around and grabbing the front of his shirt. He worked quickly, getting the whole thing done up in less than a minute, then spent a couple seconds straightening the collar. Aiden didn’t really see what it mattered, but if it made Jordi happy enough to avoid throwing a fit, fine.

Finally, they were both dressed and ready to go, Jordi’s guns all hidden away under his suit jacket; for once, Aiden wasn’t the same way, and his own jacket felt strangely light because of it. He shook off the feeling as they left the room, keeping pace with the other man while ignoring the yelling college kids roaming the hotel hallways with various pieces of merchandise.

The parking garage was blissfully silent in comparison. Aiden moved automatically towards the driver’s door and met with a wall of resistance in Jordi, who was in his way. Earlier, he’d been willing to let it slide, because he’d been loopy enough from the drugs and the pain that driving would have been too much of a risk. Now? Even one hand down, Aiden was the best fucking driver in this city—it was ground as deep into his bones as the violence he doled out almost nightly now, something he could do as easy as breathing. Like hell was he letting Jordi chauffeur him around like a cripple.

“I can drive, Jordi,” Aiden said, voice low and hard. He met Jordi’s eyes challengingly, muscles tensing in anticipation for a fight. It wasn’t likely, but it never hurt to be ready for anything, especially when Jordi was involved.

“Like hell you can. You’re an arm down and you literally woke up _today_.” Jordi was unmoved, keys held out of Aiden’s reach. At least he hadn’t made any moves to _prove_ that Aiden was incapable. Yet.

“If you thought I couldn’t drive with only one arm, you wouldn’t have passed me on to your guy for jobs. I could drive us there with a goddamn concussion and you _know_ it, Jordi. Give me the keys.” He set his jaw, trying not to raise his voice. His arm ached, his cigarettes were gone, and he hadn’t taken anything else to dull the pain before coming out here.

This was a hill Aiden was fully prepared to die on. From the sour look on Jordi’s face, he knew it.

Eventually, reluctantly, Jordi set the keys in Aiden’s hand, letting him unlock the car. He clearly wasn’t happy about it—not that he’d been happy about any of Aiden’s decisions, recently—but he stepped around to the passenger’s side instead. A little victory, but one that _mattered_. Aiden would take them where he could get them.

The car was dead silent as they pulled out onto the highway. Nobody was really out at this time of night, either home eating or already parked and enjoying themselves out on the town. It wasn’t quite as empty as the early morning hours, but it was empty enough to ease some of the rage out of his chest.

Even knowing where they were headed and why he had to go there, Aiden loved to drive. It was one of the few things that could wash out the rest of his thoughts. Like this, with the street lights flashing over them and the road stretching out endlessly? It was as close to peace as he could get these days. Things would work out.

He would make sure they worked out.

As they pulled into the richly built neighborhood, Aiden slowed. Parking directly outside of Schmidt’s house was asking for trouble, so he carefully pulled into the driveway of a home three addresses over instead. This house was empty, the owners out on holiday, and it was unlikely the neighbors would care enough to call the police on them—while the sedan wasn’t a luxury car by any means, it was costly enough to be reasonable in a neighborhood like this one. And Jordi would fit like a goddamn glove.

“I need to get to his ctOS box on the house, near the back. He doesn’t usually have guards in his house, but he might have them now—if he’s scared enough to cut his access, then he’s scared enough to keep some guns around the house. But they’re not patrolling outside. You think you can handle them if they come to see what’s happening?”

“You do your little hacker party tricks, and I’ll do the _real_ work. Sounds great.” Jordi was still annoyed, apparently, but if he was willing to work then Aiden couldn’t say anything against him. With a sigh, Aiden climbed out of the car, striding towards Schmidt’s house with the easy body language of someone who belonged. Jordi, exactly two steps behind him, looked even more comfortable.

Jumping over a fence wasn’t something that usually happened in neighborhoods this nice, but they got over quickly enough that hopefully no one had noticed. Aiden regretted the loss of his arm more than ever, because he’d had to rely on Jordi’s help to get over in the first place, and he could _feel_ the man judging him for it. It was doubly frustrating because the rest of him was almost completely recovered and his leg had held up easily when he’d climbed over; he was certainly able to keep pace with Jordi through the garden, but he wasn’t allowed to move his arm at all. As soon as he could, he was taking the damn sling off.

Maybe he should have brought his laptop for this, but Aiden was more comfortable using his phone to break into things; either way, his phone was what he had and it was easier to operate with one hand than the computer would have been. He jerked his chin towards the section of yard that guards could see them from, and Jordi disappeared off in that direction. In and out. Jordi would be able to handle anything physical.

It was a complicated firewall, but not beyond his skill. Still, Aiden took longer working his way through it than he would have liked, fighting the network every step of the way—whoever had set up Schmidt’s protections, they had skill. Not professional, but that just meant they weren’t relying on some of the shortcuts that Blume programmers used. Frustrating, sure, because Aiden couldn’t fall back on old tactics, but more importantly it confirmed a theory he had: Schmidt was doing everything in his power to avoid Blume taking notice.

That was good. That was _very_ good. Aiden had a feeling that was the same reason why Schmidt let his underlings hire their own men too, making sure that nothing could be tied to him directly. And unlike Lucky Quinn, _Schmidt_ didn’t have the chops or the connections to get in dirty with ctOS.

It meant that Aiden hadn’t blown this completely, not yet. He had plans to keep it that way.

Now that he was back into Schmidt’s network, Aiden restored his own remote access to all of Schmidt’s cameras. But he was here now, so that wasn’t all he was going to do—Schmidt wanted to hide? Then Aiden was going to shine some light into all the dark places Schmidt didn’t want him to see.

He went for the office computer first; there was no telling how long it would take one of the guards to come looking, and no telling how long it would take them to notice one of their men was missing when Jordi finished doing his job. Better to get everything at once and power through it at the hotel. Aiden set up a download of _everything_ on Schmidt’s desktop, smirking a little as he watched file names flash by. Schmidt, it turned out, was a _meticulous_ record keeper. No wonder he was so careful with who had access to them.

With that download going, Aiden swapped back to the cameras in the family areas, keeping an eye on everyone eating dinner. The girl wasn’t anywhere he could see, which meant she was probably in her room. Oddly enough, it seemed like Schmidt and his wife weren’t eating alone tonight—their daughter was at the table with them again, laughing at something her father said. Strange. She should have been back in Miami by now, working on her doctorate. Something in linguistics. Their younger son wasn’t around, which meant he _was_ still at college, so Schmidt hadn’t called both of his children home.

This wasn’t a family getting ready to bolt. So why was his daughter still here?

Curiosity piqued, Aiden bounced through the cameras until he found her room, neatly decorated in the same blandly fashionable way as the rest of the house. The only personal notes were a letterman jacket and the laptop sitting neatly on her desk, closed and shut down for now. It had stickers on the lid, a few references to some media franchises and…

Aiden’s eyes narrowed as he zoomed the camera to get a better look. _Bingo_.

Marie Schmidt was twenty-five years old and, by all accounts, just as intelligent and ambitious as her father. Where Franklin Schmidt kept himself carefully out of the spotlight with his many, many businesses, Marie Schmidt had been in five different clubs and three sports by the time she’d graduated high school. Her brother had never even bothered trying to keep up with her rising star, and if her chosen major wasn’t the one anyone had expected, no one was willing to question it. Marie Schmidt had a _plan_.

Marie Schmidt had a couple of DedSec stickers on her laptop.

Nothing had come up in his cursory background checks of the family to imply that she had any experience with hacking, but Aiden figured she’d been careful to avoid mentions of that. He bet that if he went through Schmidt’s meticulous records, he’d find a sudden increase in internet security and savviness in Schmidt’s operations—an increase that would correspond to around the first time his daughter had gotten into contact with DedSec.

Chicago or San Francisco? There were other cells, sure, but those two were the ones Aiden knew had the most reach. San Francisco seemed too idealistic for this kind of low operation, but it wouldn’t be the first time a group had claimed lofty ideals while making dirty decisions. But Chicago… he’d have to look at timeline to be certain, but Chicago’s DedSec _did_ have members who travelled. And Schmidt’s family travelled rather often as well.

That was a riddle for another time. But now he knew who’d locked all of Schmidt’s information down, and more importantly, who’d locked _him_ out. He figured the Council of Daves was still testy about missing out on opportunity to access ctOS from the ground up, not that it mattered anymore. Maybe Marie felt the same way.

With her computer off, there wasn’t much he could do at the moment, but Aiden made a mental note about it anyways. He also took the opportunity to _properly_ bug Schmidt’s phone. No more hoping that he was going to hit the man’s schedule just right—Aiden was going to know where he was and what he was doing every second of the day. And more importantly, he was going to be able to track every call Schmidt made out now too. If he decided to cut and run, Aiden would know.

The download from Schmidt’s desktop finished up, leaving him with nothing else to do. The family was still eating, none of the guards had moved from their positions around the house, and no one had come around the corner to raise the alarm. It was unsettling, with how much had gone wrong over the last week, but he wasn’t about to give up a turn for the better.

“Jordi,” Aiden called softly, pocketing his phone and feeling a brief resurgence of resentment over his bound arm. He wouldn’t have left the fixer behind either way, but needing Jordi’s help just to get back to the car was infuriating.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to call twice. Jordi rambled back, constantly tracking the movement of everyone inside the house, looking as put together as he always did. Apparently, he hadn’t run into any nasty surprises either. This was shaping up to be a clean operation.

Without exchanging any further words, they climbed over the fence again and headed back to the car. This time, Jordi went straight to the passenger’s side, no fuss about Aiden driving. It was enough to mute the resentment a little, and Aiden was in something close to good cheer as he pulled out of the empty driveway and turned them home.

“Did you get what you needed?” Jordi asked after a couple minutes of silence, his voice lacking some of its usual acidity. Everything going to plan must have cheered him up, or at least soothed some of his ire about leaving the hotel.

“Yeah, I got what I needed. Full access to Schmidt’s house and files, along with something interesting about his daughter—did you know she was part of DedSec? I think she’s the one that cut all my streams earlier.” Aiden glanced over, but Jordi was looking out the window, with no way to see his expression.

“That rings a bell. One of those geek groups, right? The kind that show up at protests and shit wearing Minecraft leggings?” At least Jordi sounded _somewhat_ interested. Usually he tuned out everything Aiden said once he started talking computers.

“Hacker group. They’ve got a couple different cells, and more starting up every day. If there’s a cell here in Tampa, it’s small time—I’m thinking she hooked up with one in Miami or while travelling. It’s not unheard of.” If he could find the name she went by in one of the IRC channels, Aiden might even be able to figure out which one. “They give her ctOS access, she uses that access to help her dad out.”

“You think she’s been tracing your scrambler?” Jordi was still turned away from him and still talking like this was just a thought experiment, but ice ran down Aiden’s spine. He’d been trying to figure that out himself—had Marie been watching him the whole time he’d been watching her father?

“Maybe. I’m going to try and change things up again when we get back to the hotel. No sense in making it easy on her.” He thought about offering to get one set up on Jordi too, but it wasn’t like Jordi didn’t know people. If he’d wanted his face blurred on cameras, he’d have had it that way already. The complete lack of profile seemed to suit him fine.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. You’re not gonna sleep at all, are you.”

It wasn’t a question. Aiden answered it anyways. “Not likely. I’ve got to pick through all of this information, see if Schmidt’s computer can give me more than his phone did. He kept a lot of records—I might be able to find all his satellite offices, see where the big hitters outside of Tampa are. Houston, probably, but I’ve got the feeling that Boston and Charleston might be good targets too. If I’m lucky, I won’t need to go to his office at all.”

Jordi snorted, and the conversation stopped. They drove in complete silence back to the hotel, Aiden careful as he pulled into a parking spot. The entire trip hadn’t taken more than an hour, and the lobby was still crowded with costumed people when they went back in. More of them were wearing glowsticks and flashing lights now though—Aiden couldn’t figure out if it was just because of the onset of night or if there was an actual reason behind it.

He followed Jordi through the crowd, not adverse to using his height to his advantage as they made their way to the elevators. Thankfully, this time they were mostly empty, people more intent on coming out than going in. Jordi remained silent as they made their way back to the room, holding the door for Aiden before flipping the deadbolt once they were both in. No sense in taking chances.

As Jordi started peeling his clothes off again, Aiden headed to the desk, grabbing his laptop on the way. A soft litany of muttering started up behind him, Jordi’s uncharacteristic silence finally broken—apparently, the man didn’t think much of Aiden’s sleep hygiene. With the success at Schmidt’s home still buoying him up, Aiden couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed by the sound.

The laptop booted up easily, happier now that it was plugged in, and his access to Schmidt’s home was intact. If Marie knew he was in her system, she hadn’t given any indication—but he was betting she hadn’t noticed. Hell, she probably wouldn’t even bother checking. He’d gotten sloppy earlier, Aiden knew it, but that was going to help him now; if the Schmidts didn’t think they needed to run because Marie was smart enough to keep him at bay, that meant they wouldn’t see him coming. That kind of arrogance was par for the course for these kinds of criminals, and Aiden was used to seeing it in hackers too. You got a little bit of ctOS access, and suddenly you were a god.

Marie had no idea what he could do. Aiden was looking forward to showing her.

Behind him, the bedside lamp clicked off, plunging the room into darkness. The only point of light was the soft glow of his laptop screen, his download of Schmidt’s files sitting next to the live feeds from Schmidt’s house. Jordi’s muttering had finally tapered off, and it looked like he was intent on getting some rest.

“Goodnight, Jordi,” Aiden said, feeling charitable.

“I hope your fucking arm falls off.”


	7. crash_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand back to the E rating we go.

**August 26, 2016, 02:04**

 

True to his predictions, it looked like he wouldn’t need to hit Schmidt’s office after all. In fact, Schmidt was in the process of switching office buildings entirely—not cutting and running, not quite, but trying to hide his trail. It might have worked too, if Aiden hadn’t been forced to come looking for him at home.

That meant that all those records from the office had been on Schmidt’s home computer instead; with that in mind, no wonder Marie had cut all access. Maybe she hadn’t even realized Aiden was _in_ their system. Maybe it had been a sensible precaution, just in case.

Either way, it meant that Aiden had Schmidt’s history laid out in front of him like a tapestry of depravity. And the man’s meticulous record-keeping was paying off.

Most of this he’d be sending on anonymously to FBI field offices in the relevant locations. Aiden could do a lot, but he couldn’t be in almost a dozen cities at once—anyways, the women being held would be better off with a proper organization helping them repair the damage. He’d entrusted the safety of Poppy and the rest of the girls from Lucky Quinn’s auction to the CPD, the least he could do was extend the same amount of trust to the FBI agents who specialized in the field.

The real work would be separating the useful information from the chaff, making sure that each office got its own specific packet of data, and pruning all evidence of his _own_ involvement. The Vigilante had mostly faded from the limelight and Aiden wanted to keep it that way. Schmidt’s operation was much bigger than the other auction clients and suppliers he’d been busting since leaving Chicago—it was the first time Aiden was forced to actually pull in federal help.

He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling, but it gave him something to do while Jordi slept. And as he began building files of information and dirt on Schmidt’s local underlings, Aiden started to build a plan too.

Eventually, light began to filter in under the curtains. He should have taken another round of pills hours ago, but being forced to get the bottle undone with one hand in a sling was an unappealing thought. He should have made coffee, or headed downstairs to one of the pharmacies a block away for another pack of cigarettes, but he hadn’t done that either. One part apathy and one part growing, gnawing pain in his shoulder equaled staying seated instead of doing any of the things he _should_ do. At least he’d put together all the information he’d been planning on sending along. It would be easy enough to send it along when the time came.

Jordi groaned himself awake, sheets rustling softly around his legs as he moved on the bed. Aiden thought about turning to watch, then dismissed the thought a little more slowly than he was comfortable with. Instead of giving into temptation, he focused on the cameras in Schmidt’s house, watching the unnamed woman go about her morning work while the family slept.

Even so, he was hyperaware of the sound of Jordi getting up, starting up the coffee machine, heading into the bathroom—maybe it was the grinding edge of pain in his arm, or maybe it was just that he was fully awake and finally making progress, but everything Jordi did seemed too much. There wasn’t anything happening on the cameras to distract him. Nothing that could match up to the distraction meandering back into the main room, at least.

Predictably, Jordi was not wearing pants. Aiden wasn’t sure when he’d stopped looking at the laptop, but by the smug look on Jordi’s face, it was too late to pretend like he was still working.

“Like something you see?” Jordi asked, starting up another cup of coffee. He’d grabbed the cocktail of painkillers too, a couple pills resting on the hard top of the television stand. Aiden grunted, then leaned back in his chair and hoped Jordi wouldn’t make him jump through hoops for them.

“If I say no, will you believe me?” The question was rhetorical, and Aiden didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve got a plan to get back at Schmidt. Dismantle his business and get him into a spot where you can teach him a lesson about not paying his fixers.”

“What, not gonna concuss him and handcuff him to a lightpole or something? I thought that was your thing now, the whole intervention thing. Get people arrested, feel real good about it for five minutes, the whole nine?” Jordi set the first coffee in front of him, then the pills as well.

“This sick son of a bitch doesn’t deserve to live, and I’d hate to disappoint you. I want his daughter dead too—she was his second in command the last couple years. Wife has been avoiding everything about the business, and I don’t think his son’s aware of anything, so we can let them go.” Aiden tossed the pills back, swallowing, then took a sip of the scalding hot coffee, ignoring the way it burned his tongue. Not like it was worth tasting the first place.

“Mm, well, won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You wanna transfer payment over to me for my services from his account? ‘Cause I don’t work for free, you know that, and you have now officially made my revenge lesson into _work_ , just saying.” Jordi grabbed the second coffee for himself, leaning against the desk Aiden was seated at. It put his groin just below eye level, and it took enormous effort to keep his eyes focused on Jordi’s face.

“What, no pro bono? Not even a friendship discount?” It felt odd to say the word ‘friend’ in conjunction with _Jordi_ of all people, but Aiden had to admit, he was the closest thing to a friend he had now. T-Bone was off the grid again and Clara was dead—Jordi was all he had left. The only person to know him as _Aiden_ first, the Vigilante second.

“You’re fucking cute. Seriously though, my money. I’m not running a charity, and as much as I enjoy fucking you, you’re not worth that amount of cash. Not ten years past your expiration date, that’s for damn sure.” Jordi smirked at him, then took a careful sip of the coffee and grimaced.

“Ten ye—I am _not_ that old. I’m sure as hell not older than you.” Aiden wasn’t sure if he was more amused or offended by the thought.

“You don’t know how old I am. Money. Plan. C’mon, give me one.”

“I’ll transfer the money once Schmidt is dead—I don’t want to alert him ahead of time.” Jordi made a face at that, but nodded and gestured for Aiden to continue. He knew how the game worked. “On Sunday, he’s got another shipment coming in. Right now, they think they’ve got us locked out, and they think we won’t come back fast enough to do anything, but they want to keep an eye on the product. So, they’re going to be vulnerable. They won’t be at the warehouse itself, they’ll be at the intermediary, but they _think_ we’re going to hit the warehouse if we hit anything. That’s where you come in.”

“I go in, work some magic, and you… what? Twiddle your thumbs? You’re still an arm down.” Jordi grabbed the strap of the sling for good measure, and Aiden had to tug himself free.

“I’m going to be playing guide this time. It’s my turn to be up on a roof and out of danger, don’t you think? It’s a strip club not far from the movie theater, that’s where he makes the transfer payments to the people who handle his sales. You’ll fit right in—I won’t.” It was frustrating, but Aiden had to admit it: this time, Jordi was the one who was in the best position to do the ground job. He could hack just fine from a distance, and he’d be a liability in a shootout. Until his arm was healed up, it was better to play it safe.

Jordi snorted, but didn’t disagree. The man might like sniping, but he wasn’t averse to getting his hands dirty either. At least one of them would be having fun.

“Any questions?” Aiden asked, not sure if he expected an answer or not. Jordi usually didn’t provide input, not beyond useless comments about his intelligence, but he knew that didn’t mean Jordi had no _opinions_. And for all his failures, he was a damn good fixer, able to get places he really shouldn’t without anyone catching him. When Jordi wanted someone dead, they were dead.

With one exception.

“We’ve got a day before the shit hits the fan, right?” Jordi took a longer drink of his coffee, giving Aiden a thoughtful look.

“Closer to two. Shipment won’t come in until almost midnight, so we’ve got most of tomorrow to prepare as well. I don’t want to shoot the rifle one arm down, but there’s a couple decent vantage points if you trust me with your baby. Kick’s going to hurt like a bitch though.” Aiden downed most of his coffee with a final gulp, setting the paper cup back down. At least he wouldn’t have to put the butt up against his hurt shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s enough time. You remember that conversation we had about safewords?” Though Jordi’s tone didn’t change, his gaze had sharpened. Aiden blinked, taken off guard by the sudden shift in conversation. When had they— _Right_.

“You said I couldn’t be trusted with ‘banana’, if I recall correctly.” He lifted an eyebrow challengingly. If Jordi wanted something, he could ask for it with his big boy words.

“Yeah, but you remember the rest of the shit, right? How to be a proper person, green-yellow-red, actual communication? You remember that?” This conversation might have been less uncomfortable if Jordi was wearing pants, but Aiden doubted that.

“Yes, Jordi, I remember the conversation. Why?”

“Great. How’d you like to be blindfolded and facefucked? I’ve got this whole, like, program of things I want to try with you because I’m guessing you’re one of those guys that can go to pieces in an instant, just based on what I’ve gotten out of you so far. I’m thinking about exploring that.” Jordi took another sip of coffee, eyebrows raised.

Aiden opened his mouth, then closed it again after a couple seconds. When he’d wanted Jordi to get to the point, that hadn’t exactly been how he’d _expected_ it. From the grin on Jordi’s face, the dickhead knew it too.

He glanced down for a moment, then back up to Jordi’s face. No way he would have missed the look, and Jordi’s grin widened.

“...Okay,” Aiden said carefully, pushing the chair back from the desk. “So, you want to… blindfold me and then get a blowjob? That’s certainly a way to spend the time.”

“Nah, facefuck you. The difference is critical. I was thinking restraining your arms, keeping you from hurting yourself—don’t fucking look at me like that, you’d do it in a heartbeat and you know it—maybe jump for earplugs too. I’ve got this image in my head and I wanna play it out, you know?”

Jesus. Aiden had an image in _his_ head now, and he hated how appealing it was.

“Besides, we’ve got all day. And it’s not even like I’m going to be fucking your ass or anything, you’ll walk just fine. Might be hoarse though. What a shame.” Jordi kept _grinning_ at him, like he knew the thoughts running through Aiden’s head. Maybe he did. Maybe Jordi was secretly some kind of sex demon plucking fantasies out of his head and making them reality.

Aiden rubbed a hand over his face, trying to buy himself some time. The problem was, Jordi was _right_ —they had more than enough time to sit around and do nothing. He wasn’t going to get any sleep soon either way… and he wanted it. Much as he hated to admit it, he wanted it. Had wanted it from the moment he’d kissed Jordi almost a week ago and had never really _stopped_ wanting it even when he pushed the thoughts and desires down.

Couldn’t even muster the proper amount of self-loathing to _hate_ that he wanted it either, only enough to be frustrated that he was so goddamn obvious about it.

“Christ. Fine, but I’m not sure how you want me to ‘safeword’,” and here Aiden pulled his hand away to make quotation marks with his fingers, “with a mouth full of dick. I’m good, but not that good.”

“You cocky son of a bitch. No, I’m going to be dropping some new concepts on you. It’ll be great, you’ll love it. Come on, get up so I can get you naked.” Jordi pushed away from the desk, sauntering over to his suitcase. For a second, Aiden was struck by the mental image of Jordi goddamn Chin just carting handcuffs and blindfolds everywhere—but no, he was pulling out a couple of ties. It figured they’d come with the suits.

He hauled himself up out of the chair, bracing a hand against the desk for balance. The tylenol had pulled the harshest edge off the pain in his arm, but he was grateful that Jordi wasn’t going to be pinning him to the mattress again. As enjoyable as that had been, between his still-healing leg and his arm Aiden wasn’t sure he’d be up for round two. Christ, showering was going to be a pain in the ass.

“If I let you come in my mouth, can I at least get another pack of cigarettes too?” It was a crude way of putting it, but Aiden figured that was his best chance for an honest answer. Jordi laughed, so maybe the humor would make him more inclined to say yes.

“I’ll think about it, you fucking addict. Here, let me—” Jordi’s hands were swift but careful as he pulled off the jacket, and then the shirt underneath it. He paused long enough to eyeball the bandages wrapped around Aiden’s arms and pull off the ones covering the site of his IV, then moved on to his pants. Here his hands lingered, thumbs dragging over Aiden’s hip bones as his fingers slipped under the hem of his jeans. It was tempting to try and shove his pants down on his own, but he had a feeling that Jordi wouldn’t take kindly to it, and there was something vaguely ritualistic to the whole affair.

Instead, Aiden watched Jordi’s hands. They were familiar in a way—not just because of the man they belonged to, but because of the life they showed in the calluses and tendons. There were the faintest hints of scar tissue along Jordi’s knuckles, like he’d learned to fight before he’d learned to properly support the bones in his hands. Those hands moved over Aiden’s skin with ease, one palm sliding up the scar on his side before slipping back down into his pants to grab his ass.

“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Jordi said, voice low. He was much closer than Aiden remembered him being, face only inches away when Aiden looked up. Jordi squeezed, then pushed Aiden’s pants down his thighs, leaving him exposed but still trapped. “I’m going to get you naked, and you’re going to get on your knees for me. We’re going to keep that arm nice and supported while I tie the other one up. And then I’m going to blindfold you and touch you wherever I fucking want. I’m going to fuck your mouth, whenever I fucking want. And you’re going to take every bit of it until you can’t remember what it was like to live without my hands on your body.”  
  
Aiden swallowed, blood rushing into his face and down to his groin. Jordi said it like it was a foregone conclusion, like there wasn’t a world where Aiden wouldn’t go down on his knees for him, like this was how things were always meant to be. He cleared his throat, then said, “And the safeword?”

Jordi grinned at him, feral but with a hint of approval at the edges. It was worrying how much that hint of approval meant to him. “We’re moving you up in the world. Green means good, yellow means hold on, red means stop. You think you can manage that?”

“Yeah,” Aiden said, breath hitching as Jordi shoved his pants down further, rough palms sliding down the backs of his thighs. “Yeah, I can manage that. Jesus, Jordi.”

“I can’t wait to start introducing you to petnames. God, that’s gonna be fun.” Jordi went down on his knees without warning, Aiden swaying into the empty space where he’d been. He made quick work of Aiden’s shoes, dragging his jeans all the way down. Helpfully, Aiden stepped out of them, earning himself a quick bite to the thigh that shot lightning up his spine.

Jordi on his knees—now _there_ was a fantasy that Aiden wanted to explore later. From the way Jordi’s eyes darkened as he looked up, he bet the man knew it too. His hands made their slow way back up Aiden’s legs, squeezing the backs of his calves before settling firmly on the outsides of his thighs, holding him steady.

“Alright. Come on down for me.” Aiden dropped carefully, using Jordi’s hands for balance as he came down on his knees. Once he was settled, Jordi leaned in and kissed him slow and dirty, like he had all the time in the world and he wanted to spend it using Aiden’s mouth in every way possible. He shifted his grip, squeezed Aiden’s ass again, then finally pulled away grinning. “Fucking perfect. Stay right there and don’t move.”

Aiden wasn’t sure just how far ‘don’t move’ extended, so he froze everything but his breathing, eyes tracking Jordi’s movement carefully. The first tie went around his ankles, binding them close but not tight. Jordi grabbed Aiden’s good arm and pulled it behind his back, using the trailing end of the tie to secure it against his ankles. He tested it carefully as Jordi stood again, pulling against the silk and feeling how it kept him from moving in any useful way. It was like that first night, but more secure—no longer hasty knots of convenience, and the thickly layered silk was sturdier than the thin cotton material of his shirt.

He was effectively trapped. It shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was; if Jordi didn’t want him to move, then he’d made it damn hard to do anything other than follow his orders. Aiden tugged on the tie again, then relaxed and closed his eyes.

“Good at following the spirit of things, not the best at following the letter, huh?” Before he could open his eyes and see what Jordi _meant_ by that cryptic little remark, the second tie was pulled over his eyes. The silk was cool against the back of his eyelids, and he could feel Jordi knotting it tight enough that it wouldn’t come free on accident.

Blind and trapped now, with a man who’d come pretty goddamn close to killing him when Aiden was at his best. He shifted a little uneasily, then cleared his throat and said, “Jordi—”

Fingers slid into his hair, derailing the thought before he could get it out. Without being able to see him, and Jordi quiet enough that hearing him was nearly impossible too, the sudden touch came as a shock. Aiden’s breath hitched, muscles tightening for a second before he remembered that he couldn’t move. Shouldn’t be moving anyways.

“This is how this is going to work,” Jordi said, moving his hand over Aiden’s head with lazy, even strokes, “I’m going to put something in your hand, and you’re going to hold it tight. You want things to keep happening, you’re going to keep holding it up. You want things to stop, you’re going to drop it, and I’ll give you a chance to say whatever you need to say. You want everything to stop completely, that’s red. You want things to pause because you’re overwhelmed, or you need to stand, or the fucking kids outside the door are bothering you—that’s yellow. Nothing’s too trivial for that, you understand me? This is what the whole system’s for. Nod if you get it.”

Aiden nodded, feeling the tug of his hair against Jordi’s fingers. He’d been wondering how this whole ‘safeword’ business worked when his mouth was covered—or full. Jordi made a pleased noise, then pulled his hand away.

Without that point of contact, he was lost. The rough carpet against his knees and the slowly warming silk against his skin were the only sensations he could pick up, though Aiden was almost positive that he could feel the difference in air currents as Jordi walked past him to pick something up. There was a lightning quick flash of hot skin as Jordi pushed something into his hand, then gone again as he moved away when Aiden clenched his fingers tight around it. Hard, long, cylindrical—his tactical baton. He rubbed his thumb over the release button, then shifted his grip so that he had a firmer hold.

Jordi’s hand returned, fingers lightly pressed along his jaw as one thumb rubbed over his lips. Heat washed through him again as Aiden remembered the low, hungry way Jordi talked about fucking his mouth, and he parted his lips, letting Jordi push his thumb in. He groaned softly, trying to lean forward as he sucked, but the tie securing his arm kept him from moving more than a couple inches; Jordi firmly pushed him back, pressing his thumb down against Aiden’s tongue and forcing his mouth open.

Aiden couldn’t close his mouth, not with the way Jordi was holding his jaw, so he settled for working his tongue against Jordi’s thumb. He could feel fingers burying themselves in his hair again, Jordi’s blunt nails scraping against his scalp as he forced Aiden’s head into a better position. With his arm bound and his eyes blindfolded, there was nothing Aiden could do to resist him—nothing he _wanted_ to do to resist him. He was overheating, skin flushed just at the thought of the things Jordi could do to him with the barest amounts of effort.

“God, you fucking love this, don’t you?” Jordi said, sounding amused and approving in equal measures. Aiden wished he could see his face—Jordi’s voice never told him enough, and it would be so easy to assume that approval was real instead of mocking. He made a faint noise in response, then gasped when Jordi yanked his head back.

Jordi pulled the hand away from his mouth, leaving Aiden’s jaw hanging. He didn’t try to close it, remembering clearly Jordi’s order not to move, then shuddered when Jordi gentled his grip in his hair in reward.

With how slow everything else had gone, Aiden had expected this to be slow too—Jordi pushing in teasingly, just enough to get him riled up and never quite giving him what he wanted. He wasn’t prepared for the firm pressure keeping his jaw loose or the sudden solid weight of Jordi’s cock forcing its way into his mouth. For a couple seconds he panicked, breathing in sharply through his nose as he jerked at the tie around his ankles—but Jordi wasn’t a complete bastard.

Once he realized that he wasn’t choking, Aiden relaxed, making a soft noise as Jordi rocked his hips a little. He was wearing a condom—not that it should have been a surprise, but Aiden hadn’t thought about it—and wasn’t pushing in more than a few inches. The grip on his jaw softened and Aiden tentatively closed his lips around the shaft, adjusting to the slow thrusts. His tongue pressed against the slick latex, feeling the thick vein underneath it, and he groaned as Jordi took this as a chance to thrust harder.

The fingers in his hair tightened again, forcing Aiden’s head into a better position as Jordi’s cock drove deeper, filling his mouth with each jerk of his hips. He couldn’t focus on anything _but_ Jordi—the way he felt as he fucked into Aiden’s mouth, the way his hands were so hot and his cock was so heavy, the way his voice rolled over Aiden like waves as he talked about how beautiful he was like this. Every thrust sent an answering jolt of electricity down his spine, the thrill of being _used_ mingling with the hungry desire of being _wanted_ , and Aiden let himself fall into the hard rhythm Jordi set with relief.

And then, abruptly, everything stopped.

Aiden made a soft noise of surprise and dismay when Jordi pulled free, and it took him several seconds to realize that the fingers in his hair had gone from pulling to petting. Jordi was saying his name, asking—colors. Something about colors. Something important about colors.

“Green,” he rasped after thinking for entirely too long about what Jordi meant. His grip had slipped on the baton, the end of it touching the floor now—Aiden firmed his grip back up and swallowed, saying the word again. “Green—it’s green.”

“Okay,” Jordi said, voice surprisingly gentle. Aiden wished he could see Jordi’s face. He wished he could suck Jordi’s cock even more.

His mouth was nudged open again, Aiden gratefully dropping his jaw further as he tightened his fingers on his baton. Jordi pushed in slow, frustratingly slow, but his grip in Aiden’s hair was harsh again, pulling hard enough that he whined softly. The whine turned into a moan as Jordi drove in harder, slamming his cock in deep enough that Aiden _did_ choke this time, sucking in a desperate breath through his nose as Jordi rocked back just enough for him to breathe.

The low stream of words started again, Jordi describing what he looked like in excruciating detail as he fucked Aiden’s mouth, never giving him more than a second or two to catch his breath. The harder Jordi moved, the less coherent Aiden’s thoughts got, concentration shattered over and over again until all he had were broken pieces of attention focused entirely on Jordi’s cock.

This time, he kept his grip firm on the baton. His joints hurt from how hard he was holding it, the pain fading into the pain from his arm—his hair—his throat—until it was just another flavor of sensation. Something to feed into the relentless tide of _want_ that washed over him, something to add to the heat and pleasure building under his skin. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, sparks lighting across his nerves with every thrust, and when Jordi slammed home and _stayed there_ , Aiden came so hard he saw stars.

By the time Jordi pulled free, he was lightheaded from lack of air, staying upright only by virtue of the grip on his hair. Aiden wheezed for air, pulling in huge gasps as he shook from the onslaught of feeling. His ears were ringing, his skin washed over with warmth, and he heard Jordi shifting down onto his knees as the hand in his hair loosened and finally pulled away. It prompted a whine, but Jordi made a low soothing noise, so Aiden quieted, leaning heavy into the solid warmth of Jordi’s chest against his.

It took him too long to realize that Jordi had undone the knots in the tie around his ankles, having pulled it completely free. He was trying to get Aiden’s fingers to unclench around the baton, rubbing at his knuckles gently and saying something about being good. After a bit, he managed to relax his grip, letting Jordi take the baton away.

The blindfold came next, Aiden’s eyes squeezing shut to block out the glare of light. Jordi made another soothing noise, easing Aiden’s arm back around to his front and smoothing his hands up Aiden’s back. One found its way back into his hair, beginning to move in slow, gentle strokes that worked in harmony with the melody of his words. He tried to match his breathing to them, slowing the stuttering gasps and smoothing out the soft wheeze on every exhale.

Everything was a little distant, the soft warmth surrounding him muting all the petty complaints of his body. He wasn’t sure if they were still playing, but it didn’t hurt to follow the rules anyways. If any part of him needed to move, then Jordi would move him. Until then, he could simply _be_.

A shift in the rhythm of Jordi’s petting roused Aiden from the half-doze he’d fallen into, his eyes blinking open as Jordi’s hand pulled away entirely. Before he could even make a sound, Jordi was urging him upright, grip firm on Aiden’s good arm as he got him vertical again. Aiden let himself be moved and shooed towards the bathroom, staying steadier on his feet than he thought he would be—the floating feeling in his head wasn’t affecting his balance at least.

Jordi pushed him down onto the toilet and moved past him to start the bath, the sudden surge of sound from the faucet loud enough to make Aiden jump. Once Jordi seemed satisfied with the temperature, he pulled the stopper and left the bathroom. It was cavernously empty without him, Aiden’s skin cold at the absence of his touch.

His arm ached, but not worse than it had before they’d started—it was a dull, throbbing pain, muted by the painkillers he’d taken, only noteworthy because he had completely forgotten it while on his knees. His thigh ached a little too, though the stitches there had held up through everything he’d done to them. He rolled his jaw, feeling the strain there, then closed his eyes to try and recapture to comfortable numbness he’d been floating in. Better to have that than this lonely, quiet hurt that wanted to fester inside of him.

The sound of Jordi coming back and tossing something on the counter forced him to open his eyes again, lifting his head to check what he’d heard. Some kind of black paper bag holding something round. He would have considered ‘grenade’ as an option, but Jordi didn’t seem like the type for them—he preferred the sort of explosives that shattered walls, not just people. Aiden felt the same, sometimes.

There didn’t seem to be that much water in the bath, but Jordi stopped the flow anyways, looking pleased. The effort of doing _anything_ right now was too much, so Aiden just watched the other man pull a round white ball from the bag and set it in the tub. It began to fizz enthusiastically, spinning wildly in the water and sending faint streamers of color out as it whirled.

Jordi moved back over to him, burying his fingers in Aiden’s hair again and absently running his thumb over the shell of one ear. He could pull away easily, shake Jordi off and ignore the outstretch of affection; instead, Aiden leaned into it, pressing his face into the warm muscles of Jordi’s stomach. It wasn’t quite the same, but some of the warm, floating feeling from earlier came back.

He sat there until Jordi finally pulled away, stopping long enough pull Aiden’s arm out of the sling. With some bemusement, Aiden watched him climb into the tub, Jordi getting settled before patting his lap imperiously. “C’mere. Keep that arm out of the water, I don’t want to have to deal with the bandages.”

Arguing felt like another massive effort he wasn’t willing to make, so Aiden climbed into the tub after him and sprawled with his back against Jordi’s chest after some shifting and fussing. The hotel bath wasn’t exactly designed for two taller-than-average men, and it would have been a tight fit either way, but they managed. At least he knew why Jordi hadn’t bothered filling the thing full now—the water was dangerously close to reaching his bad arm as it was. But this was… nice.

“Not exactly something I pictured you going for, Jordi,” he said, voice still hoarse. Jordi’s arms were firmly wrapped around his middle, fingers splayed across Aiden’s chest and stomach as his bearded chin dug into Aiden’s good shoulder. It meant that they were cheek to cheek, pressed together in so many places that Aiden stopped counting—thigh to thigh, his toes curled over Jordi’s feet, one of his hands running over the hair on Jordi’s arm. “You’re all soft and cuddly, aren’t you?”

“I’ve never been more insulted in my life,” Jordi said, pressing his lips to the edge of Aiden’s jaw. “Also you smell like hospital and sadness. Not supposed to get that arm wet for another week, apparently, but you sure as fuck could stand to shave. Just looking out for you here, like a friend would.”  
  
“Are we friends?” It wasn’t an idle question, despite his sarcastic remarks earlier. Aiden thought they might be, but he couldn’t be sure with Jordi. Maybe this was the sort of thing Jordi would do with _anyone_.

“You’re not dead yet, are you? You might be stupid as hell, Aiden, but you’re not _dumb_.”

He snorted, unable to help the wry quirk of his lips, and closed his eyes. Jordi was a goddamn force of nature when he wanted to be, but so was Aiden—maybe it was a good thing that they were friends. For a given metric of friendship. Jordi’s metric of friendship, which went as far as ‘not killing you’, so Aiden would take what he could get for now.

They could have been there for minutes or hours, Jordi idly running his hands over Aiden’s skin as Aiden tried to match his breathing. Nicky had taken a class on meditation once, when Jacks was five and Lena just born—yoga, technically, but it had all these mindfulness techniques. She’d dropped out of it after two months, between her work schedule and the criminally high prices the class wanted to charge, but he remembered some of the things she’d complained about. Breathing exercises were important for centering yourself, she’d said, but she didn’t understand why she was paying fifty dollars a week to be told how to _breathe_.

That was one of those memories he’d forgotten he’d had—Nicky, exasperated as she finished making dinner for herself while Jacks was busy with a coloring book. Aiden had been in one of the kitchen chairs, making agreeable noises while he convinced Lena that the bottle in his hand was an acceptable substitute. Nicky had been so frustrated, but laughing too, because the idea of classes on _inner peace_ being the source of her outrage had been just absurd enough to make her smile.

His old trainer had talked about breathing a lot too. He couldn’t tell her that, not even if she knew he used to go to the gym and had an inkling of where he got his money, but it was true. If you knew how to breathe, you could do just about anything—it was the first step in mastering yourself completely. You knew how to breathe, and you could take just about anything the world threw at you.

“So,” Jordi said, voice soft but still loud enough to throw off Aiden’s rhythm, “this is what we call _aftercare_. Remember when I said I was gonna be throwing down some new, high-level concepts? This is it. We did the safewords, now we’re doing aftercare. This isn’t going to be on the quiz, but memorize it anyways.”

“I know what aftercare is, Jordi.” Aiden shifted a little, getting comfortable again. Jordi’s fingers drummed on his stomach, but he couldn’t tell if that was irritation or thoughtfulness driving it. There were a lot of potential emotions in that one gesture.

“You didn’t know what a fucking safeword was, you’ll have to forgive me for covering _all_ the potential gaps in your education. How’s your throat?” Jordi kissed his jaw again, lips lingering against the start of a beard there.

“Not too bad. Could go for a smoke.” Aiden could feel Jordi’s derisive snort more than he could hear it, but that was about what he’d expected. “Next time get a hotel room with windows I can open, if you hate it so much.”

“You’re going to die of a heart attack and I’m going to piss on your grave and laugh about it. We’ll get lunch and you can get your shitty cigarettes and _then_ we can walk through this plan of yours and actually patch up the holes. How’s that sound?”

Aiden thought about that, rubbing his knuckles over the back of Jordi’s hand. It wasn’t like his day could get any weirder, and if Jordi was the one going in, he owed it to the man to make their plan as watertight as possible. Playing things by ear when he was charging in was one thing; playing things by ear when he was supposed to be calling the shots was another.

“Yeah,” Aiden said, turning his head to press their lips together. “That sounds great.”


	8. drift_

**August 28, 2016, 23:47**

 

Aiden stretched out in his seat, fingers resting on his keyboard. Fifteen minutes until showtime, though he was already setting up his pieces on the board. Jordi was cooling his heels in the club, occasionally offering dry commentary on the girls up on stage—Aiden might not have any interest in watching, but it was good to know that Jordi’s position was still secure. It meant he could concentrate on the sting he was setting up.

He ran a hand over his jaw, smooth where Jordi had shaved him only a couple hours before, then smiled grimly as he watched SWAT vans begin to pull up around the warehouse. There weren’t cameras inside, but that didn’t mean the entire area was without surveillance, it just meant he had to get smart about it. Schmidt might not have had any contacts in Blume, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t bought out the police—that was why Aiden had called it in to _every_ department within the area. One dirty cop could stop a call, but he couldn’t stop all of them. And with the FBI involved too…

It was obvious that Schmidt’s men hadn’t been expecting it though. Aiden didn’t have any cameras in the warehouse, but he could see the way they moved through windows. They were panicking, and more and more police were arriving, shaving down their ability to respond. Time was running out. Which way would they jump?

The warehouse door opened, four men standing with their hands behind their heads, guns on the ground at out of reach. Aiden couldn’t hear what was being said, but from how the SWAT team was moving in, it looked like things were going to plan.

“Call’s in to the local police. They’ve surrounded the warehouse and Schmidt’s men have mostly surrendered—looks like he wasn’t paying them enough to protect this group. You’re on.” Aiden swapped cameras from the warehouse to the security cameras inside the strip club. It was an odd feeling, being so removed from the action, but at least it was only the one time.

In the end, they’d elected to leave the rifle behind; if he’d needed to shoot it, it would’ve meant Jordi was in the shit deep enough that he wouldn’t have _time_ , and they were better served with him low to the ground and ready to start the car at any moment. That meant he was tucked into a parking lot across the road instead, laptop on the console between chairs, a cup of gas station coffee steaming in his cupholder. Playing the lookout and the getaway driver both, calling the shots without making them.

It was frustrating, but at least he was getting a front seat view to a really good show.

“Oh, he is freaking the fuck out. Did he just flip the table? Jesus, man, get some professionalism. Alright, I’m following him up to the private rooms, tell me if he’s got armed guards or something running down the hall.”

On the screen, Jordi detached himself from the bar, sidling between the scantily clad waitresses as he headed towards the back of the club. There were plenty of women in various forms of undress scattered around, but Jordi didn’t seem too interested in any of them and none of the men around were interested in _him_. Almost out of habit, Aiden skimmed money off the top of the accounts he was seeing—no sense in passing the chance up.

There were a couple of bouncers in front of the door to the private rooms, but Jordi only had to talk with them for a couple minutes before they were laughing and letting him in. He’d never understand how the man managed that, it wasn’t like Jordi was _shy_ about his career, but he supposed the charisma had to be good for something. Jordi could play for a crowd like he breathed. Natural. Easy.

“You’re clear down the hall. He’s in the fourth room on the left, with his contact and his daughter. You think you can handle all three of them?” Aiden smiled faintly at the rude gesture Jordi made to the camera. Figured he’d note where all of them were the moment he stepped into a room.

“A couple of girls and a fat old man. I’m going to fucking throw out my back with how hard I’ll be working. Are these rooms soundproofed?”

“Yeah, according to the building specs. You can’t hear anything, can you?” If Jordi could, that might mean trouble. But on the screen, the man made a dismissive gesture and paused with his hand on the door.

“Nah, we’re golden. You have eyes?” Jordi slipped a hand into his jacket, drawing out a pistol. Aiden flipped through the cameras until he found the one he wanted—a place like this might not record everything, but they recorded enough. Always useful to have blackmail on your clients.

In the room, Schmidt and his daughter were having a screaming match, with their liaison looking irritated from her position on the couch. Marie’s laptop and papers were spread across what might have been a table for drinks once, though this was clearly her temporary office. With the office compromised, they’d come here to make sure the shipment was handed off without a problem and Aiden… Aiden had given them a whole load of problems to worry about.

“I have eyes. And they don’t have anyone in the room with them.” He couldn’t see Jordi anymore, but Aiden could almost _hear_ the smile over the comm line.

“Keep the car running for me. This won’t take long.”

Through the camera, he could see the door open. The Schmidts didn’t take notice, but the liaison did, sitting up straight and frowning as Jordi walked in. The door swung shut behind him, and the moment it clicked and secured the soundproofing, Jordi shot her three times in the chest, her body jerked and falling back as blood sprayed over the couch and up the wall.

_Now_ they were paying attention, but it was too late—Jordi shot Schmidt in the gut and the groin, letting the man topple with a scream as he grabbed Marie before she could bolt around him. She tried to claw at his face, but he hauled his head out of reach, flipping her around and wrapping her fingers around the gun as he shoved it up under her jaw.

One last bullet, then silence.

Aide switched cameras, checking to see if anyone had heard—but no, there weren’t any guards in the hallway, the other private rooms were active with men who’d paid extra for the women entertaining them, and the club outside was loud enough from the crowd and the music that none of them would have noticed a gunshot anyways. It was a nice place, for an upscale crowd.

Discreet.

He swapped back to the camera in Jordi’s room, watching him carefully arrange the bodies to look more natural. Jordi packed up the computer and papers too, making sure that there wasn’t any evidence of Marie’s involvement with Schmidt’s operation, then did a final pass over the three bodies to make sure that there wasn’t any evidence he was leaving behind. Unlike Marie, he’d been wearing gloves.

Jordi gave the camera a thumbs up, checked over his suit for any bits of gore, then stepped out of the room, the door shut behind him. Aiden stayed on the cameras long enough to be sure that Jordi was out safe, then set off the virus he’d inserted to wipe the saved footage. He shut his laptop and set it in the backseat along with their bags. They’d checked out of the hotel that evening and they would be going separate ways once they reached Miami—Aiden to a safehouse that he could lie low in until his arm was healed up, Jordi to the airport so he could get to a job he was already a day late for.

“You like that setup I did?” The passenger door swung open as Jordi hopped in, tossing the bag of Marie’s electronics in the back. Aiden would handle those once they’d reached the safehouse. “I’m thinking, miss Marie walks in on dad slutting it up with the escort, right, and his marriage with mom—well, maybe his marriage isn’t the greatest, he’s a workaholic, she’s obsessed with her image, and he’s been dating these girls for _years_ , everyone knows it. So, she’s got a gun, because she sick of the bullshit, and she walks in to confront him and this girl tries to stop her right—one in the chest for her, and then two for dear old dad. But miss Marie ain’t exactly thinking straight, so she plugs two more in the hooker, realizes what she’s done and _bam_. Fucking poetry in action there.”

“It’ll buy me some time. I appreciate it.” Aiden pulled out of the parking lot, gliding up the silent street to the highway entrance and taking 275 towards the sunshine skyway. They’d be heading south for a while. A long while.

“So, what, you’re going to just dump all that info on the government? You really think they’re going to do anything with it? I’ve done federal contracts before, it’s shit, and they never pay you enough for the jackasses you have to deal with.” Jordi stretched out, cranking his seat back a couple notches.

“I can’t do it all alone, Jordi. And they’ll be able to set them up with a better support system than I could—they have the resources.” Aiden leaned forward, grabbing the bottom of the steering wheel with his offhand so he could pull out his pack of cigarettes. Twelve left. He’d pick up another one the next time they got gas.

Jordi grunted, but didn’t disagree, turning the radio up a little and looking out the window. There weren’t many people on the road this time of night, only the occasional burst of headlights in the opposite lanes as they sped towards the darkness of the bay. The sedan could go for another three hours before he’d have to gas it up, and as long as he stayed easy on the gas, no cops would even look twice at them.

The radio thumped out some new pop single as they took the first bridge, the water as dark as the moonless sky. Tampa lay behind them, all the chaos and frustration of an unfamiliar city fading away; maybe he’d take a break on these coastal kingpins for a while. They were some of the most prolific, sure, but they weren’t the only ones—and with Schmidt dead, they’d be on high alert. Better to let them get complacent again. Maybe he’d head back up north, find someplace _cold_ as fall rolled in, someplace where stepping outside wasn’t like walking into a sauna.

Maybe he’d see what sort of places Jordi had lined up to visit. Wouldn’t hurt to have someone at his back for the next job—like he’d said, he couldn’t do it alone. And they worked well together. Really well together.

“So,” Jordi said, casual as anything, “got any plans in November?”

Aiden took a long drag on his cigarette and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we are! This one's short, but I feel like y'all wouldn't be into three thousand words of Jordi and Aiden having culinary adventures across Tampa.
> 
> I'm already poking at a sequel and maybe something to go between them, though it's going to be a bit before that ends up here either. Thanks for reading!


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